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Beatrice Leigh at College: A Story for Girls

by Julia Augusta Schwartz · English · Gutenberg #25893 · 361,956 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Beatrice Leigh at College: A Story for Girls

Author: Julia Augusta Schwartz

Illustrator: Eva M. Nagel


        
Release date: June 24, 2008 [eBook #25893]
                Most recently updated: January 3, 2021

Language: English

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BEATRICE LEIGH AT COLLEGE

A Story for Girls

by

JULIA A. SCHWARTZ

      *      *      *      *      *      *

A SONG-CALENDAR
BY A. L. C.


I

"When blood of autumn
  Runs warm and red
In all the branches
  Over head--
Sing clear bright sunshine,
  And tender haze,
Sing glad beginning
  Of College Days!


II

"When pines and spruces
  Are bowed with snow,
When ponds are frozen
  And keen winds blow--
Sing cozy corners
  Or jingling sleighs,
Sing work or frolic
  Of College Days!


III

"When comes sweet April,
  With soft slow rain,
And earth has broken
  Her frozen chain--
Sing low shy birdnotes,
  And woodland ways,
Sing mirth and music
  Of College Days!


IV

"When June days linger,
  And warm winds blow
O'er fields of daisies
  Adrift like snow--
Sing sad leave-takings
  And tender praise
Of all the mem'ries
  Of College Days!"

      --Vassarion, '95.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

  Cordial acknowledgment is due to the editors of the _Youth's
  Companion_ for their courteous permission to reprint in the following
  chapters of college life the episodes entitled respectively "Wanted:
  a Friend," and "Her Freshman Valentine."

      *      *      *      *      *      *


BEATRICE LEIGH AT COLLEGE

A Story for Girls

by

JULIA A. SCHWARTZ

Author of
"Elinor's College Career" etc.

Illustrated by Eva M. Nagel







[Illustration: SHE HID HER FACE AGAINST MARTHA'S DRESS]



The Penn Publishing Company
Philadelphia MCMVII

Copyright 1907 by the Penn Publishing Company




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                             PAGE
      I  Bea's Roommate                9
     II  Enter Robbie Belle           35
    III  A Question of Economy        59
     IV  Her Freshman Valentines      81
      V  The Giftie Gie Us            92
     VI  A Wave of Reform            115
    VII  Four Sophomores and a Dog   145
   VIII  Classes in Manners          172
     IX  This Vain Show              198
      X  Consequences                214
     XI  A Girl to Have Friends      231
    XII  An Original in Math         255
   XIII  Just This Once              283
    XIV  Classmates                  299
     XV  Victory                     321



ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                       PAGE
SHE HID HER FACE AGAINST MARTHA'S DRESS        Frontispiece
Lila Stood Staring Out at the Snow                       28
"Anything New?"                                          73
"Oh, Thank You; I Don't Want Anything to Eat"            96
We Handed Over Five Dollars Apiece                      201
She Waved an Open Letter In Her Hand                    276
She Held Both Hands, Smiling                            301






BEATRICE LEIGH AT COLLEGE

CHAPTER I

BEA'S ROOMMATE


Lila Allan went to college in the hope of finding an intimate friend at
last. Her mother at home waited anxiously for her earliest letters, and
devoured them in eager haste to discover some hint of success in the
search; for being a wise woman she knew her own daughter, and understood
the difficulty as well as the necessity of the case.

The first letter was written on the day of arrival. It contained a
frantic appeal for enough money to buy her ticket home immediately,
because she had a lonesome room away up in the north tower, and nobody
had spoken to her all the afternoon, and her trunk had not come yet, and
she did not know where the dining-room was, and the corridors were full
of packing-boxes with lids scattered around, and girls were hurrying to
and fro with step-ladders and kissing each other and running to hug each
other, and everything.

The second letter, written the following day, said that a freshman named
Beatrice Leigh had come up to help her unpack. Beatrice had a long braid
too, and her hair was the loveliest auburn and curled around her face,
and she laughed a good deal. Lila had noticed her the very first evening.
She was sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the big
dining-room. When Lila saw her, she was giggling with her head bent down
and her napkin over her eyes, while the other girls at that table smiled
amused smiles. Lila knew instantly that this poor freshman had done
something dreadful, and she was sorry for her. Later that same evening in
Miss Merriam's room she told how she had marched in to dinner alone and
plumped down at that table among all those seniors. She seemed to
consider it a joke, but Lila was sure she had been almost mortified to
death when she learned of her mistake, and that was why she had laughed
so hard. Several other freshmen were at Miss Merriam's. Two of them were
named Roberta, and one was named Gertrude something. But Lila liked
Beatrice best. Miss Merriam called her Bea. Miss Merriam was a junior who
had invited in all the students at that end of the corridor to drink
chocolate. Lila did not care for her much, because she had a loud voice
and tipped back in her chair and said yep for yes.

The third missive was only a postal card bearing a properly telegraphic
communication to the effect that it was Saturday morning, and Bea was
waiting to escort her to the chapel to hear read the lists of freshman
names assigned to each recitation section. Mrs. Allan scanned the message
with a quick throb of pleasure; then sighed as she laid it down. The
indications were hopeful enough if only Lila would be careful not to
drive away this friend as she had the others.

Meanwhile on that Saturday morning Bea and Lila, silent and shy, had
crowded with their two hundred classmates into chapel. The two friends
sat side by side. Lila was in terror of making some horrible blunder that
might overwhelm her with a vast indefinite disgrace. She leaned forward
in the pew, the pencil trembling between her fingers, the blood pounding
in her ears, while from the platform in front a cool voice read on evenly
through page after page of names. And then at last the tragic despair of
finding that she had jotted down herself for two sections in English and
none in Latin! When she managed to gasp out the awful situation in Bea's
ear, that young person looked worried for full half a minute. It was a
very serious thing to be a freshman. Then her cheery common sense came to
the rescue.

"Never mind. We'll go up and look the lists over after she has finished
them all."

"Oh, can we? Will you truly go with me?" Lila drew a quick breath of
relief and gratitude. This was one of the precious privileges of having
found a friend. She gazed at Bea with such an adorable half-wistful,
half-joyful smile on her delicate face that Bea never quite forgot the
sensation of realizing that it was meant wholly for her. The memory of it
returned again and again in later days when Lila's exacting ways seemed
beyond endurance. For Lila's nature was one of those that give all and
demand all and suffer in a myriad mysterious ways.

On the afternoon of that Saturday when Bea skipped up the narrow tower
stairs to invite Lila to go to the orchard to gather a scrapbasket full
of apples, she discovered the door locked. In answer to her lively
rat-tattoo and gay call over the transom, she heard the key turn.

Bea started to dash in; then after one glance stopped and fumbled
uneasily with the knob. In her happy-go-lucky childhood with many
brothers and sisters at home, tears had always an embarrassing effect.

"Let's--let's go to the orchard," she stammered. "It's lovely, and the
fresh air will help your--your headache." She had a boyish notion that
anybody would prefer to excuse heavy eyes by calling it headache rather
than tears.

Lila pointed to the bed which was half made up.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded in agonized reproach. "I thought
the maids attended to the beds here. I left the mattress turned over the
foot all day long, and the door was wide open. Everybody in the
neighborhood must have looked in and then decided that I was lazy and
shiftless. They believe that I have been brought up to let things go
undone like that. They do, they do! Miss Merriam just the same as said
so. She poked in her head a minute ago and said, 'Heigho, little one,
time to make up your bed. It has aired long enough and the maid is not
expected to do it.' She said that to me! Oh, I hate her!" Lila caught her
breath hard.

Bea opened her candid eyes wider in astonished curiosity. "But didn't you
want to know about the maid?"

"She mortified me. Do you know how it feels to be mortified? The--the
awfulness--" Lila stopped and swallowed once or twice as if something
stuck in her throat. "She might have told me in a different manner so as
not to wound me so heartlessly. She isn't a lady."

"Please." Bea twirled the door-knob in worried protest. "Don't talk that
way. She is my friend. We live in the same town. She's nice, really.
You've only seen the outside. Please!"

"Oh, well!" Lila raised her shoulders slightly. "She isn't worth
noticing, I dare say. Such people never are. I can't help wishing that
you were not acquainted with her. I want you all to myself. I'm glad she
belongs to another class anyhow."

Into Bea's puzzled face crept a troubled expression. "You're a funny
girl, Lila," she said; "let's go to the orchard."

On their way across the campus, they passed countless girls hurrying from
building to building. Every doorway seemed to blossom with a chattering
group, a loitering pair, or an energetic single lady on pressing business
bent. Bea met every glance with a look of bright friendliness in her
eager eyes and lips ready to smile, no matter whether she had ever been
introduced or not. But Lila's wild-flower face, in spite of its lovely
tints and outlines, seemed almost icy in its expression of haughty
criticism. No wonder, then, that this miniature world of college
reflected a different countenance to each.

"Aren't they the dearest, sweetest girls you ever saw!" exclaimed Bea as
the two freshmen turned from the curving concrete walk into the road that
led to the orchard.

"I saw only one who was truly beautiful," commented her companion. "I
expected to find them prettier."

"Oh, but they are so interesting," protested Bea in quick loyalty.
"Nearly everybody appears prettier after you get acquainted. I've noticed
that myself. It is better to dawn than to dazzle, don't you think? Sue
Merriam, for instance, improves and grows nicer and nicer after you know
her. You will learn to love her dearly."

"Never!"

At the tone Bea gave an involuntary whistle; then checked herself at
sight of Lila's quivering lips. "Oh, well, don't bother. Let's go on to
the orchard. Look! There comes Roberta Abbott with about a bushel of
russets. She is a funny girl too. To judge from her appearance, you would
say she was sad and dignified. She has the most tragic dark eyes and
mouth. But just wait till you hear her talk. Didn't you meet her last
night at Sue's?"

"Yes." Lila turned away to hide the flicker of jealousy, for she had
learned long since how transparently every emotion showed in her
features. "I think we ought not to waste any time now. And anyway I'd
rather get acquainted with you all alone this afternoon."

Bea stared. "You're the funniest girl!" She walked on after waving a
sociable hand at Roberta. "It is interesting to have friends that are
different, don't you think?"

"To have one friend who is different," corrected Lila.

"All right," laughed Bea. "Oh, see what a gorgeous glorious place this
is, with the trees and scarlet woodbine and the lake sparkling away over
there, and girls, girls, girls! But I don't believe that there is a
single other one exactly like you."

During the next week this thought recurred to her more than once. By
means of some diplomatic maneuvering, the two friends managed to have
their single rooms exchanged for a double. After moving in, Lila seized a
moment of solitude to plan a beautiful cozy corner for Bea. She dragged
her own desk into a dusky recess and set Bea's at an artistic angle at
the left side of the sunniest window. Just as she was hanging her
favorite picture above it, Bea came rushing in with her arms full of new
books.

"Oh, no, no, no!" she exclaimed impulsively, "that won't do at all. You
must put it at the right so that the light will fall over the left
shoulder. Otherwise the shadow of your hand will go scrambling over the
paper ahead of your pen. Here, let me show you."

By the time she had hauled the desk across to its new position, Lila had
vanished. Bea found her huddled in a woe-begone heap behind the wardrobe
door in her bedroom, and flew to her in dismay.

"Oh, Lila, dearie, did you smash your finger or drop something on your
foot? There, don't cry. I'll get the witch-hazel and arnica and
court-plaster. What is it? Where? Why-ee!" she gasped bewildered, "why,
Lila!" for her weeping roommate had pushed her gently away and turned her
face to the wall.

"I was doing it for you," she sobbed. "I was trying to please you, and
then you were so cr-cr-cruel! You were cruel."

"Cruel?" echoed Bea, "why, how? I haven't done a thing except buy the
books I ordered last week. Yours were down in the office, too, but I
didn't have enough money for all, because Sue Merriam borrowed four
dollars. She asked after you and said----" Bea hesitated, smitten with
novel doubt that she ought to begin to think three times before speaking
once where such a sensitive person was concerned.

Lila sat up in swift attention and winked away her tears. "Said what?"

"Oh, nothing much." Bea wriggled. "Just talking."

"I insist."

"Oh, well, it doesn't signify. I was only thinking----" Bea paused again
before blurting out. "She said that roommates are good for the
character."

At this Lila rose with such an air of patient endurance that poor Bea
felt clumsy, remorseful, injured and perplexed simultaneously. A cloud of
resentful silence hovered over them both through the weary hours of the
afternoon. Not until the ten o'clock gong sent the echoes booming through
the deserted corridors, did Lila break down in a storm of weeping that
terrified Bea. She found herself begging pardon, apologizing, caressing,
explaining and repenting wholesale of rudeness about the desk, of selfish
neglect in the case of the books, of disloyalty in giving ear to Miss
Merriam's gratuitous comments. This gale blew over, leaving one girl with
darker circles under her eyes and a more pathetic droop at the corners of
her mouth, leaving the other with a fellow feeling for any unfortunate
bull who happens to get into a china shop, intentionally or otherwise.
Life at college promised to be like walking over exceedingly thin ice
every day and all day long.

And yet, after she had learned to make allowances for the
oversensitiveness, Bea found Lila more lovable and winning week by week.
She was philosopher enough to recognize the fact that every one has the
"defects of his qualities." The very quality that sent Lila hurrying
up-stairs in an agony of mortification because a senior had forgotten to
bow to her, was the one that inclined her to enter into Bea's varying
moods with exquisite responsiveness. It was delightful to have a friend
who was ever ready to answer gayety with gayety and sober thoughts with
sympathy. Indeed, when Lila was not wrapped up in her own suffering, she
could not be surpassed in the priceless gift of sympathy. For the sake of
that, much might be forgiven.

Much but not everything. Just before the midyear examinations came a
crisis in the growth of their friendship. One afternoon Lila reached the
head of the stairs barely in time to make a sudden swerve out of Miss
Merriam's breezy path.

"Heigho, Eliza Allan," she called in careless teasing, "why don't you
spell your name the way it is in the catalogue? More dignified, I think.
By the way, I've been into your room and left some burned cork for your
chapter play. We had more than we needed last night. By-bye."

Lila walked on in frosty silence. By-bye, indeed! And to address her as
Eliza, too, on this very afternoon when she had as much as she could bear
anyhow. To hear her essay read aloud and criticised before the class, and
then to have it handed to her across the desk, so that anybody could see
the awful REWRITE in red ink scrawled on the outside! To be sure, all the
essays had been distributed at the same time, and nobody knew for sure
that hers had been the one read aloud. Still they might have seen the
name on it or noticed how red and pale she turned, or something. And
worse still, the examinations were coming soon, and she was sure she
would fail. If it were not for leaving Bea, she would go home that night.
She certainly would!

As she entered, Bea looked up brightly from the cardboard which she was
cutting into squares.

"Here you are!" she exclaimed in cheery greeting, though her eyes had
shadowed instantly at sight of the unhappy drooping of every line. "Sue
Merriam has been in to show me how to make you up for the play next
month. It takes quite an artistic touch to darken the brows and touch up
the lashes. Catch these corks and put them away. They're messing up my
dinner-cards."

Lila's shoulders quivered as if pricked by a spur even while she
mechanically caught the bits of black and fumbled them in her fingers.

"She meant that my brows are too thin and my lashes too light. I would
thank her to keep her criticism until it is called for."

For half a minute Bea kept her head down while her chest heaved over a
sigh of weary anticipation. Then she turned with an affectionate query:
"What has happened now, Lila? Tell me, dear."

Upon hearing about the affair of the essay, she expostulated consolingly,
"Of course that is no disgrace. She is severe with all the girls, tears
their essays into strips and empties the red ink over them. She doesn't
mean it personally, you know. How can we learn anything if nobody
corrects our mistakes? Anyway it was an honor to have it read aloud. Very
likely the girls did not see the REWRITE. She never bothers much with the
utterly hopeless papers. Come, cheer up! The red ink was a compliment."

"Do you really think so?" Lila smiled a little doubtfully. "It sounds
like one of the sophists--'to make the worse appear the better reason.'
I'd love to believe it, and you are sweet to me." She laid one arm
caressingly across Bea's shoulders. "It is queer that I don't mind more
when you scold me so outrageously."

"Scold you?" repeated the other in amazement at such a description of her
soothing speech.

Lila nodded. "I never stood it from anybody else. Maybe it is because you
are my special dearest friend. That is why I came to college, you know.
At home the girls disappointed me. There were several in the high school
who might have been my friends if they had been different from what they
were. Ena Brownell and I were inseparable for weeks till one morning she
went off with another girl instead of waiting for me on the corner,
though I had telephoned that I would meet her there. Even if I was a few
minutes late, she would have waited if she had really cared. I cried
myself to sleep every night for a long time but I never forgave her."

"Um-m-m," muttered Bea, her head again bent over the cardboard, "how
horrid! See, isn't this a lovely daisy I'm drawing? They're to be dinner
cards for my next spread. This is for your place."

"It's sweet. I think you are the most talented girl in the class." Lila
stooped for a hug but carefully so as not to interfere with the growth of
the silvery petals. "There was another girl, and her name was Daisy. She
seemed perfect till I discovered that she prized her own vanity more
highly than my happiness. She refused to take gym work the third hour
when I was obliged to have it. She said the shower bath spoiled the wave
in her hair, and so she chose the sixth hour class. Yet she knew very
well that I had Latin at that period. I don't care for that selfish kind
of friendship, do you?"

"Um-m, no!" Bea's brush dropped an impatient splash of yellow in the
heart of the flower. Then she glanced up with a penitent smile.

"You're so awfully loyal yourself, Lila," she said. "You try to measure
everybody up to that standard. I shan't forget that day in hygiene when
you declined to answer the question that floored me. It was like that
poem about the girl who wouldn't spell a word that the boy had missed,
because she hated to go above him. And at the tennis tournament you
wouldn't leave till I had finished the match, though you shivered and
shook in the frosty October air. You do a lot for me, and I am downright
ashamed sometimes. See, behold the completed posy!"

"It is too pretty for a mere dinner card." Lila dropped into a rattan
chair and idly tossed the corks from hand to hand. "Aren't you planning a
long time ahead? Your family knows exactly what to send in a box. That
last was the most delicious thing! I suppose we'll just ask our crowd of
freshmen, Berta and Gertrude and the rest."

Lila's eyes were so intent upon the dancing corks that she failed to note
the swift glance which Bea darted in her direction.

"Um-m-m," she said cautiously, "I think I might like an upper class girl
or two. Some of them have been awfully kind to me this year. Sue Merriam
escorted me to the first Hall Play, and she proposed our names for Alpha,
and on her birthday she asked me to sit at her table and meet some
seniors as an invited guest. She said the "invited" with such a thump on
it that my heart almost broke. Isn't she the greatest tease?"

No answer.

"It was mostly due to her that I came to college," continued Bea with an
effort to speak naturally though her fingers shook the least bit in their
grasp of the brush, and one anxious eye was watching Lila's face. "I've
known her all my life. She persuaded the family to send me, and she
tutored me last summer and helped in a million different ways. You don't
understand how much I owe her. It is such a little thing to invite her to
my--to our party. I'd love to do it, Lila."

Still no answer. The silence lengthened out minute after minute. Finally
Bea ventured to raise her head and hold up another card for inspection.
"See, a new daisy, but this one has a different disposition. Do you
observe the expression--sort of grinning and cheerful? This is like Sue,
while the first one is like you, an earnest young person, not one bit
impudent. See it, lady. The dearest flower-face. I love it."

"And yet"--Lila's voice sounded choked, "you want to invite her to the
party. You know it will spoil my pleasure. You--know--I--hate--her."

Bea's frame trembled once in a nervous shiver. Her fascinated eyes
followed Lila to the window, where she stood staring out at the dazzling
winter world of snow.

"You must choose between Susan Merriam and me. I have a right to demand
it. I have a right. I have a right."

Bea saw Lila lift her arm as if to brush away the tears. Then one hand
fumbled for her handkerchief, while the other squeezed the burned corks
with unconscious force. She was certainly wiping her eyes.

"You must--you must--choose to-day--between Susan Merriam and me. If you
choose her, I shall never speak to you again. If you choose me, you must
have nothing to do with her. Nothing! You must drop her acquaintance. You
cannot have both."

Bea suddenly tipped back in her chair, teetered to and fro for a frantic
moment, then brought it down with a bump on all four feet.

"Nonsense!" she snapped.

Lila stood motionless so long that Bea had time to notice the ticking of
her watch. Then she turned slowly around from the window.

"And this is friendsh----"

[Illustration: LILA STOOD STARING OUT AT THE SNOW]

"Oh!" squealed Bea, "oh, oh, oh! Ha, ha, ha!" Flinging her arms out
over the desk she buried her face upon them and shook with
uncontrollable laughter.

Lila crimsoned to her hair, then went white with anger. Without a word
she walked into her own room and locked the door.

Half an hour later when she rose from the bed and began to pour out a
basinful of water to bathe her smarting eyes, she heard a rustle on the
threshold. Glancing quickly around she saw a square of white paper being
thrust beneath the door. It was a letter from home on the five o'clock
mail. Lila picked it up and opened it listlessly. The fit of weeping had
left her exhausted.


"My darling daughter," she read,

"This is a hasty note to say that your great aunt Sarah is on her way
east, and will stop at the college for a day's visit with you. I wish to
caution you, dear girl, against even the semblance of a slight in your
treatment of her. Do not forget to inquire after Gyp the terrier, Rex the
angora cat, Dandy the parrot, and Ellen the maid. Your aunt is
exceedingly sensitive about such small attentions. You might invite your
friends to meet her at afternoon tea, and if you can manage it tactfully
you might warn them not to discuss topics with which she is unacquainted.
She has, as you know, a very peculiar disposition. The least suspicion of
neglect or hint of criticism exasperates her beyond endurance. In her
childhood she suffered continually because of this oversensitive nature.
I suspect that she made no effort to conquer the fault. Indeed so far as
I may judge from her present attitude, she has always considered it a
proof of superior delicacy and refinement. She has cherished her
selfishness instead of fighting it. As a consequence her life has been
embittered and unspeakably lonely. I believe that she has not a friend on
earth except her pets, and even Gyp has learned not to frisk with joy at
sight of anybody but his mistress.

"I am sure I may trust you, dear, to make her visit as happy as possible,
although in truth it seems irony to speak of real happiness in connection
with such a temperament. You may not be aware that even your Aunt Sarah
was once the heroine of a romance. He was an extraordinarily fine man, and
she would have found happiness with him, if with anybody. But one day in
the rush of an important law-suit, he forgot to keep an engagement with
her, and she never forgave the slight. After that disappointment--and it
was a grievous disappointment, however self-inflicted--especially grievous
to such an expert in self-torture--her nature grew rapidly and steadily
more self-absorbed and unlovely.

"My darling little daughter, sometimes I have feared that you may have
inherited a similar tendency. It has been difficult, dearest, to guide
aright where even the slightest word of criticism stings and burns and
lashes. You, more than many girls, need the discipline of wisest,
frankest friendship with others of your own age. I see that during your
high school days I did wrong in trying to supply their place to you with
my own companionship. A child, however precious, cannot be forever kept
wrapped in cotton-wool.

"So, dearest daughter, you will understand how joyful I am this year in
hearing of your new friends. Don't let them slip away through any fault
of yours. Whatever is worth winning is worth keeping, even at the cost of
many a sacrifice of foolish pride.

"When you see your aunt, be sure to remember me to her.

                      "With a heart full of love,
                      "Mother."


Lila read the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and walking across the
little room threw herself again face downward on the bed. After a while
the dressing-gong whirred its tidings through the corridors. Lila slid to
her feet and began to walk mechanically toward the mirror.

"But Bea laughed. She laughed at me. Mother doesn't know that Bea
laughed. And I thought she was my friend." Lila felt another sob come
tearing up toward her throat and clenched her teeth in the struggle to
choke it back. Blinded by a rush of fresh tears, she opened the top
drawer of the bureau and felt for her brush with groping fingers.

"She laughed right in my face. I--I--could have forgiven everything
else. But--but mother doesn't know that Bea in-insulted me.
She--laughed--right--in--my----"

Then through the blur Lila happened to catch sight of her reflection in
the looking-glass. The last sob broke off sheer in the middle, and left
her with her lips still parted in an unfinished quiver.

The horrified face that stared back at her from the mirror was striped
and rayed with startling streaks of black. The astonished eyes shone out
from white circles framed in ebony sunbursts; the nose was like an islet
washed by jetty waves; the mouth slowly widened under a fiercely upcurved
line of inky hue.

In the study on the other side of the door, remorseful Bea was wearing
several paths in their best rug, as she waited for some sign. Suddenly a
new sound welled up and she bent her head to listen, in quick dread of
another storm of weeping. But, no! This was different. It was not a sob,
though it did seem rather gaspy. It bubbled and chuckled. It was
laughter.

"Lila!" cried Bea, and made a dash toward the room. Lila flung open the
door.

"Bea!" she answered, "I am going to give a tea for my Aunt Sarah. Do you
think Sue Merriam will come if I invite her?"




CHAPTER II

ENTER ROBBIE BELLE


Now it happened one evening in the early fall, while Bea and Lila were
learning to live together, that the Students' Association held a meeting
to appoint corridor wardens for the year.

In the throng that came pouring out of chapel afterward, Bea, who had an
eel-like rapidity in gliding through crowds, found herself at the doors
some yards in advance of Lila. Halting to wait in the vestibule, she
overheard a junior instructing a new freshman officer in her duties.

"It is very simple. Oh, no, Miss Sanders, no, indeed! There is nothing
meddlesome about it. You're not expected to spy upon the girls in your
neighborhood. The aim is merely to preserve a certain degree of quiet.
Girls are often thoughtless about being noisy in the corridors. Simply
remind them now and then in flagrant cases that they are disturbing those
who wish to study. Of course you must be tactful, though it is rarely
that a student wilfully disregards the rights of others."

Bea peered around the edge of her particular door in order to catch a
glimpse of this freshman so distinguished. It was the tall, fair-faced
child with the splendid long braid, who lived at the end of Berta's
transverse. Now the sweet mouth was drooping disconsolately, and the big
eyes looked dewy with anxious tears.

"I--I don't think I'd like to," she said.

"Oh, but it is something that must be done, and you have been selected as
the one in that vicinity who strikes us as best fitted for the duties of
the position. It is really, you know, a case of public service. Every one
at some time or other ought to be willing to make sacrifices of personal
desires for the good of the community, don't you think? But forgive me
for preaching. I didn't mean to. By the way, how do you like college,
Miss Sanders?"

"It isn't so much fun as I had expected," said she. Bea's head popped
around the door again. The junior was smiling with an air of amused
superiority.

"Ah, yes, I understand. Probably you used to have a sister or cousin at
college, and from her letters you supposed that the life was composed
chiefly of dancing, fudges and basket-ball with a little work sandwiched
in between. Is it not so? And now----"

"I don't mind the work," here Bea's head popped out a third time to
contemplate this interesting classmate, "but----"

"Beatrice," called Lila at her other ear, "Berta says to hurry or we'll
miss the best of the fun. It's to be a sheet-and-pillow-case party
to-morrow, and a lot of the girls are coming in to learn how to do the
draping. Berta has an idea. Come along quick!"

Robbie Belle Sanders stared after them wistfully. "Those girls live near
me," she said, "they have fun all the time."

The junior's keen glance spied in the open countenance something that
kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she
said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner
or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home.
It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the
same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a
law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for an
instant before being spurred on by her sense of scrupulous honesty,
"there are exceptions. Once in a while a girl fails to find her special
niche. Maybe she rooms off the campus and is not thrown in contact with
her own kind. She may be abnormally shy--that hinders her from making
friends. Or perhaps she does something that queers herself first thing."

"Queers herself?" echoed Robbie Belle, "how does a person queer herself?"

"Oh, I don't know." She paused to reflect. "She does outlandish things.
And still it isn't what she does so much as what she is. Her acts express
her character. If her character is queer, she behaves queerly, and the
others fight shy of her. After all, I dare say she does find her own
level, and there is nobody else there. So she goes along solitary through
the four years."

Robbie Belle looked frightened. "I wish I knew what things are queer,"
she said.

"Oh, being different from the other girls, for instance, awfully
different, so different that everybody notices it. Not just original, you
know, but actually queer. Watch the girls, particularly those who always
go around alone, and you'll learn. Good-night, Miss Sanders. I must
congratulate you again on the honor of being appointed freshman warden.
Good-night."

Robbie Belle walked slowly down the corridor to her room. "I wonder if I
am queer," she thought. "I am almost always alone." She halted before a
door that displayed a small square of white paper pinned in the middle of
its upper half. Robbie Belle, her hand on the knob, regarded the sign
hopelessly. "If you have a roommate who never takes down her ENGAGED, and
she doesn't like company and she won't go anywhere with you herself,
maybe you can't help being queer."

Robbie Belle entered softly. It was a large room and seemed quite bare
because of the absence of curtains, rugs, and cushions. The unsociable
roommate was sitting beside the centre table, her elbows propped on its
shiny surface that was innocent of any cover and ignorant of the duster.
A green shade over her eyes connected a blur of nondescript hair with a
rather long nose beneath which a pair of pale lips in the glow of the
drop-light was rapidly gabbling over some lines in Greek scansion.

Without looking up, she waved one hand forbiddingly; and Robbie Belle
obediently shut her mouth over the few words that were ready to be
uttered in greeting. She stood waiting in her tracks, so to speak, until
the final hexameter had wailed out its drawling length, and Miss Cutter
pushed back the green shade.

"Well," she demanded, "what was the important business before the
meeting? I could not spare valuable time for self-government foolishness
to-night."

"They appointed corridor wardens," answered Robbie Belle.

"Oh, indeed! It is certainly time, I must say. In theory it is all very
well to make the rules a matter of honor, but when you happen to live in
a nest of girls who behave as if they were six years old, I insist that
something more forcible than chapel admonitions is required. Who is the
warden for this neighborhood?"

"I am," said Robbie Belle.

"You are!" Miss Cutter pushed the green shade farther up on her high
forehead. "Well, I must say!" She surveyed her roommate with new
interest. "How exceedingly extraordinary!"

Robbie shifted her weight to the other foot. "I didn't want to be," she
said.

"No, of course not, and you nothing but a child yourself. It must be your
height and that grave way you have of staring. With that baby-face,
couldn't they see that your dignity is all on the outside?"

Robbie said nothing, but if Miss Cutter had not been quite so
near-sighted she might have spied deep in the violet eyes a glint of
black remotely resembling anger.

"Think of appealing to a sixteen-year-old infant--really you are
literally in-fans, which is to say, one without the power of speech!
Fancy me applying to you to compel quiet in the halls! Imagine that
boisterous crowd trailing after Miss Abbott and Miss Leigh et al.--Hist!"
She lifted her head like a warhorse sniffing battle near. "There they are
now."

Robbie Belle lifted her head too and listened, although indeed the noise
would have penetrated to the most inattentive ears. A multitude of feet
were marching lock-step past the door to a chorus of giggling, stifled
squeals and groans, while at intervals a voice choking with emotion rose
in shrill accents: "There was an old woman all skin and bones, o-o-oh!"
When it faltered and collapsed on the o-o-oh, the other voices joined in
and dragged out the syllable to lugubrious and harrowing length. Then
some one giggled hysterically and another squealed. The soloist took up
the verse: "She went to the church to pray, o-o-oh!" The chorus wailed
and moaned and croaked and whimpered and groaned in concert. Miss Cutter
regarded Robbie Belle sternly.

Robbie Belle's shoulders rose and fell over a deep breath. She stepped
across to the door and closed the transom softly just as the next weird
line hissed out above the tumult and then sank into its smothering welter
and moan of vowels. Robbie spoke more loudly.

"One of them said that they were going to dress up in sheets and
pillow-cases to-night. They are practicing for the Hallowe'en party. It's
only fun."

Berta's voice--it was Berta who did the solo--here rose in a quavering
shriek that halted not for keys in their holes or transoms in their
sockets: "The worms crawled in and the worms crawled out, o-o-o-oh!"

Miss Cutter rose to her indignant feet. "Roberta Sanders, as you are the
corridor warden for this neighborhood, I appeal to you. I make formal
complaint----"

"They've gone." Robbie Belle smiled in relief and sat down rather
quickly. The lock-step had receded into the muffled distance and the
ear-splitting wail wafted back in tones that grew steadily fainter.

Miss Cutter took off her glasses, rubbed them bright, put them on again,
and contemplated Robbie Belle.

"I do believe that you would rather I suffered than that they became
offended with you. You are afraid to rebuke them."

Robbie's eyes fell and the guilty color rose slowly through the delicate
skin of throat and brow. But Miss Cutter did not see it. She had pulled
down the green shade and propping her elbows in their former position had
returned to her scansion. She had wasted too much time already.

Conscience-smitten Robbie Belle slid silently through the door and stood
at loss for a minute in the deserted corridor. It was Friday night.
Nobody studied on Friday night except girls who were queer or who roomed
with superior special students like Miss Cutter. On her first day at
college Miss Cutter had remarked that there might be a vacant seat of
congenial minds for Robbie at her table. Somehow the grave young freshman
who was hoping for fun failed to find them satisfying. She had not won a
real friend yet, and here it was the end of October.

Robbie Belle was not conceited enough to feel sorry for herself, or else
she might have perceived a certain pathos in that listless journey of a
lonely child from her worse than solitary room to the deadly quiet of the
library. One of the hilarious ghosts who were weaving spells under the
evergreens happened to glance in through a great softly shining window
and recognized the drooping head above a long deserted table between the
shelves of books.

"There's our noble warden," whispered Bea, "studying on Friday night!
Looks like a dig as well as a prig, n'est-ce-pas?"

Berta's eager dark face grew sober under the swathing folds of her
pillow-case. "Maybe it isn't her fault," she said.

But Robbie Belle unaware of this precious drop of sympathy plodded
through an essay on Intellect, wrote out a laborious analysis, and at the
stroke of the nine-thirty gong crept reluctantly back to her room. The
next morning she translated her Latin, committed a geometrical
demonstration to a faithful memory, consumed a silent luncheon amid a
dizzying cross-fire of psychological arguments, walked around the garden,
through the pines and over the orchard hill for a scrupulously full hour
of exercise, read her physiology notes, and composed one page of her
weekly theme before dinner time. After dinner she stood in a corner of
Parlor J and watched the dancing. Then she went to chapel with Miss
Cutter, returned alone in haste to dress in the concealing sheet and
pillow case. It was rather difficult to manage the drapery without aid,
especially in the back and at the sides. The strange junior who had
chosen Robbie's name from the class list and undertaken to escort her to
the party found awaiting her a rumpled young ghost with raiment that
sagged and bagged quite distressingly in unexpected places. But the eyes
that shone from between the crooked bands of white were joyous with
excitement. In this disguise she was sure that no one would recognize
her; and so of course they would not know that she was queer, and perhaps
she would have fun at last.

And at first it really seemed as if she would. Imagine a big gymnasium
with jack-o'-lanterns on the rafters and a blazing wood-fire in the wide
fireplace, and five hundred figures in white circling and mingling among
the shadows, and at least a thousand sticks of candy, and three big
dish-pans full of peanuts, and gallons and gallons of red lemonade. When
her escort proposed that they should go up-stairs to look in upon the
seniors and sophomores who were having a country dance, Robbie Belle
moistened her lips and said, "If you please, don't wait for me. I enjoy
it so much here." Then at the junior's formal, "Oh, certainly, Miss
Sanders!" she remembered that often people did not understand her unless
she used a bothersome number of words. So she added hastily, "I mean that
you must go with your own friends and leave me here, because I am
watching some girls I know, and I want to speak to them. Please don't
trouble any more about me, thank you."

"I do know them," she assured herself as her escort disappeared, "and I
do want to speak to them even if they don't know me. I think"--she
hesitated and turned quite pale at the prospect of such daring, "I think
I shall go and play with them. They will suppose I am one of them. Nobody
will know."

At this point the file of impudent ghosts, headed by Berta, who looked
unusually tall and still angular under her flowing sheet, paraded past
Robbie Belle's corner, their elbows flapping like wings. With a gasp for
courage she took one step forward and found herself prancing along at the
end of the line.

It was such fun! Robbie Belle had shot up to an annoying stature so
comparatively early in life that her romping days seemed to have broken
short off in the middle. She had never had enough of tag and
hide-and-seek and coasting. She hated long skirts. Indeed that was one
reason why she longed to join the enviable circle of freshmen around
Berta: they wore golf skirts all day long, except when hockey called for
the gymnasium costume or bicycling demanded its appropriate array. The
reason why she liked Miss Abbott best of course was because her name was
Roberta, too.

On this Hallowe'en, in joyous faith in her disguise, she forgot her
height and breadth and the dignity imposed thereby. And anyhow Berta
Abbott was just as tall, if not of such stately proportions. So Robbie
Belle with exulting zest in the frolic raced up-stairs and down with the
mischievous band of freshmen. They skipped saucily around members of the
faculty, chased appreciative juniors, frightened the smallest forms into
scuttling flight, and gave their great performance of "There was an old
woman all skin and bones," in the middle of the upper hall, where the
seniors were entertaining the sophomores.

It was fun to howl. It was so long since Robbie Belle had grown up that
she had almost forgotten the joy of using her lungs to their full
capacity. With her spirits dancing in the afterglow of such vocal
exercise, she marched after the others down to the hall below. There in
the vestibule Berta halted her followers for final instructions.

"Now, girls, fall into line according to height. We are going to
astonish----Why!" She fixed two amazed dark eyes upon the tallest, "who
are you?"

Robbie Belle heard; she felt her heart shriveling within her; her
shoulders seemed to shrink together; her head drooped. Then turning away
slowly she moved toward the gymnasium apartment, a loose corner of her
robe trailing at her abashed heels. But she did not escape swiftly enough
to avoid catching the sound of hisses.

"Ha! an interloper!"

"Hist! ye false intruder!"

"Seize him! To the shambles!"

"To the guillotine! Ho, brothers! pursue!"

That made Robbie Belle flee so fast that she was able to take refuge
behind Prexie himself while the vengeful furies withdrew to a respectful
distance. That night when she was shaking her pillow back into its case
Robbie noticed some damp spots amid its creases. A few minutes later she
laid her head down on it and proceeded to create some more. There was
only one comfort in the throng of scorching reflections: this was that it
had not been Berta's voice that had called her an intruder. Perhaps Berta
did not think she had done something so awfully wicked after all.

This faint hope infused more dreadful bitterness into the incident that
happened in mathematics C on Monday. Anybody would have believed that
Berta was offended past forgiveness. She sat next to Robbie. She was not
very well prepared that morning, possibly in consequence of Saturday's
excitement. The instructor was more than usually curt and crisp with an
unsmiling sternness that struck terror to palpitating freshman hearts. In
the middle of the hour Berta became aware that a problem was traveling
rapidly down the row toward her; and she had not been paying attention.
She had not even noticed the statement of it, for it had started at an
apparently safe distance from her seat. Turning with a swift motion of
the lips she asked Robbie Belle to tell her. And Robbie Belle--how she
longed to tell it! It had almost leaped from her lips while conscience
reasoned wildly against it as deceit. It would not be honest. And
yet--and yet--the girls would think she was queer. They would say she was
mean and priggish, for she might have told Berta as easily as not.

There! the third girl from Berta was trying to explain her own ignorance
and failing brilliantly. Now the second was stammering through a
transparent bluff. Berta had settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How
she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle!
Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle! For strange to say she flunked
too and the question journeyed on triumphantly to the mathematical
prodigy at the end of the row.

In the corridor outside Berta exerted her nimble self to overtake Miss
Sanders, who was sidling away in a strikingly unprincesslike manner, her
eyes shifting guiltily.

"So you didn't know the answer either? Wasn't that the biggest joke on
me! And really, Miss Sanders, I beg your pardon for asking. It popped out
before I could gather my wits. I am scared to death in that class, though
of course that is no excuse for sponging. I'm glad you didn't know it
enough to tell me after all."

Robbie Belle lifted the lashes from her flushed cheeks. "I--I did know
it," she said with a gulp.

"Oh!" said Berta, and stared, "how--how peculiar!"

Robbie Belle held back the tears till she had reached her room, seized
her hat and snatched her thickest veil. Then she fled to the loneliest
walk among the pines. Her veil was a rarity that rendered her an object
of curiosity to everybody she passed on the way. But she hurried on,
somewhat comforted by the conviction that no one could mark her reddened
eyelids. In truth she had good need of comfort, for Berta Abbott herself
had said that she was peculiar. And peculiar meant queer!

That evening Robbie sat down to study for the Latin test announced for
the next day. Miss Cutter was studying, too, harder than ever. The green
shade was pulled so fiercely forward that a fringe of hair stood up in a
crown where the elastic had rumpled it. Her grammar, lexicon and
text-book occupied most of the table, but Robbie did not complain. She
could manage very well by laying her books, one on the open face of
another, in her lap. For once she was grateful that an ENGAGED sign
shielded them from interruptions, for Latin was her shakiest subject,
especially the rules of indirect discourse. The instructor had warned the
class that this weak spot was to be the point of attack. If Robbie Belle
should not succeed in drumming the rules into her head before the ideas
in it began to spin around and around in their usual dizzy fashion when
she waxed sleepy, she might just as well stay away from the recitation
room. Or better perhaps, for in absence there was a possibility of both
doubt and hope: hope on Robbie Belle's part that she might have been able
to answer the questions if she had been there, on the teacher's part
doubt concerning the exact extent of the pupil's knowledge.

At the end of the corridor just outside their door a narrow stairway led
to the north tower rooms on the floor above. Beatrice Leigh and Lila
Allan and a number of their liveliest friends lived up there on the
fifth, with Berta Abbott at the foot of the stairs near Robbie's place of
abode.

Just as Robbie's usually serene brow was puckering its hardest over the
sequence of tenses, a door banged open in the tower and the stairs
creaked under swift clatter of feet--a dozen at the very least.

Miss Cutter scowled beneath the green shade; Robbie Belle could tell that
from the way the fringe of upright hair vibrated.

"Savages!" she muttered, "they'll tear the building to pieces. No wonder
the newspapers report that the college girl's favorite mode of locomotion
is sliding down the banisters."

"No," said Robbie Belle, "not that. They take hold of the railing and
jump several steps at a time. I've seen them. Miss Leigh says she does it
for exercise."

"And this also is exercise!" Miss Cutter clutched her ears as a tornado
swept past their threshold.

Robbie bent to listen anxiously. "They're going to the ice-cooler," she
said, "pretty soon they will go back again."

"Yes," said Miss Cutter as she rose and moved toward the door, "they will
doubtless go back, and doubtless also they shall go in a different
manner."

Then she went out and remonstrated briefly but to the point. Whereupon
the culprits apologized with noble profusion and tiptoed their way to the
stairs. This would have been an admirable proof of repentance if their
heels had not persisted in coming down on the bare boards in very loud
clicks at very short intervals. And every click was greeted by a
reproving chorus of "Sh-sh-sh!"

The instant they reached the hall above, pandemonium broke loose. To
judge from the sounds, they were playing blindman's buff with scampering
of heavy shoes, scraping of chairs, banging against walls, flopping on
mattresses. Even reluctant Robbie Belle looked upward in fear that the
ceiling might fall. When a deputation of wild eyed sophomores from an
adjacent study arrived to protest against a continuation of the outrage,
the shrinking corridor-warden had no loophole for escape from her duty.
Outwardly calm, inwardly quivering, she mounted the stairs to expostulate
on behalf of the Students' Association for Self-Government.

When the peace officer reached the foot of the flight, the noise sank
abruptly into a silent scurrying--on unadulterated tiptoes this time.
When she appeared at the top, she beheld the tower hall deserted, every
door shut and a suspiciously profound stillness reigning in the dimly
lighted Paradise of fun. Ah! she drew a breath of relief from away down
in her boots. Surely now she had performed her duty. Nobody could expect
her to find fault after the disturbance had ceased. Now the girls below
would be at liberty to study in peace.

Barely had she completed her hurried descent before the strange silence
above was shattered suddenly by the simultaneous banging of seven doors.
Seven full-lunged voices burst forth into a howling song, while twice as
many feet thumped and tapped and pranced and pounded in the mazes of an
extemporaneous jig.

Robbie Belle halted instantly, with a quick lift of her head. Her
nostrils quivered. Her violet eyes snapped black. Her hands clenched.
Turning swiftly she mounted the stairs once more. But this time she was
angry. The uproar was an insult to the authority of the Students'
Association. She forgot for the minute all about shy Robbie Belle.

And the mischievous freshmen above--the flippant fun-loving irresponsible
six-year-old freshmen--they waited ready to meet the warden with an
impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its
exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle's face they simply
stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and
burned and smarted. They watched her depart, her head still held at its
angle of wrathful justice. Then they looked at one another.

They could not see how, when once safely in the haven of her room, she
broke down utterly and lay trembling and sobbing in Miss Cutter's
astonished arms. Now at last she had surely committed an unpardonable
offense against the only girls for whom she cared in the whole
collegeful--especially Berta. Now Berta would be certain she was queer.

Meanwhile in the tower, Berta drew a long breath and glanced around at
her dismayed and sobered companions.

"The more I see of that girl," she said, "the better I like her. And we
have been awfully silly--that's a fact. The next time I see her I shall
tell her so too. Now suppose we go and do a little studying our own
selves."

Somehow or other before Thanksgiving Day, Robbie Belle Sanders had ceased
to be disappointed in college. With Berta for a dearest friend and Miss
Cutter withdrawn to a more congenial neighborhood, she was finding it
even more fun than she had expected.




CHAPTER III

A QUESTION OF ECONOMY


"I LOVE music myself," said Robbie Belle, lifting serene eyes from her
porridge, "but to-day is Thanksgiving Day."

"Oh!" sighed Berta, as she clasped her hands--those thin nervous hands
with the long fingers that Robbie Belle admired all the more for their
contrast with her own dimpled ones, "think of hearing Caruso and Sembrich
together in grand opera! I could walk all the way on my knees."

"What!" cried Robbie Belle in wide-eyed astonishment, her spoon half way
to her mouth, "walk seventy miles! And miss the Dinner?"

The graduate fellow at the head of their table looked quite sad as she
nodded her pretty head, though to be sure her napkin was hiding her lips.

"Why!" gasped Robbie Belle, freshman, "but Dinner is to begin at three
and last till almost six. And we are going to have salted almonds and
nesselrode pudding and raw oysters and chocolate peppermints and turkey
and sherbet and macaroons and nuts and celery and Brussels sprouts and
everything. We are painting the place-cards this morning and one is for
you. It is a shame for you to sacrifice it just to hear grand opera, Miss
Bonner. Are you really intending to take the nine o'clock train?"

Again the fellow nodded. Robbie Belle's wondering gaze rested a moment on
Berta's gypsy face alight now with an intensity of longing. Deliberately
depositing her spoon on one side of her saucer and her buttered bit of
roll on the other she devoted her entire attention to this marvel.

"I cannot understand," she said clearly, "it is only singing. And to-day
is Thanksgiving Day. It comes once a year."

Miss Bonner brushed her napkin across her mouth rather hurriedly and
excused herself from the table. Robbie Belle watched her retreating down
the long vista of the dining-room.

"Would you honestly choose to go with her if you could, Berta?" she
asked, "grand opera is only something to see and hear and then it is all
over."

"Oh, Robbie Belle!" groaned Berta, "how about the Dinner? That is only
something to eat, and then it is all over too."

"Why don't you go if you want to?" inquired Robbie Belle as she
reflectively picked up her roll again. "We can invite somebody else to
take your place at the table. Bea and Lila are going to the hothouse for
smilax and chrysanthemums."

"Why don't I go?" Berta leaned back and drew a long and melancholy sigh
from the bottom of her boots. "Girls," she turned to the others who were
still lingering over their breakfast, "she asks why I don't go to hear
grand opera. And it costs two dollars railroad fare even on a commutation
ticket, and seats are three dollars up, and I have precisely thirty-seven
cents to last me till Christmas."

"Oh," commented Robbie Belle repentantly, "I didn't think. I'd love to
pay for all of you, only I haven't any money either."

Berta clutched at her heart and bent double in a bow of gratitude
unspeakable. Robbie Belle continued to stare at her thoughtfully. "If you
truly want to, Berta, we might save up and go to the opera some other
day. I'm willing."

"Willing! Dear child! Willing! Behold how she immolates herself upon the
altar of friendship! She is willing to go to grand opera and sit
listening to sweet sounds from dawn to dark----"

"Oh, Berta!" interrupting in alarm, "not from dawn to dark really? How
about----"

"Luncheon?" the other caught up the sentence tragically. "Ah, no, but
calm thyself, dear one. Be serene--as usual. There is an intermission for
luncheon. We could go to a restaurant. It would be a restaurant with a
vinegar cruet in the centre of the table and plates of thick bread at
each end and lovely little oyster crackers for the soup. Perhaps if you
had two dollars extra you might order terrapin."

"And pickles," put in Bea generously, "with striped ice-cream."

"And angel food with chocolate frosting an inch thick," contributed Lila.

"It's a long time till spring," said Robbie Belle regretfully, "but very
likely we will need all that while to save it up."

As it turned out, they did need all that while to save it up. For
beauty-loving Berta with her eternally slim purse and hopelessly meagre
account-book, the plan at first seemed only a vision of the moment.
Nobody can save out of nothing, can she? Robbie Belle, however, had a
stubborn fashion of clinging to an idea when once it became fixed. Her
ideas, furthermore, were apt to be clean-cut and definite. This is how
she reasoned it out:

If a girl receives five dollars a month from home to pay for books and
postage and incidentals, she is entitled to whatever she saves from the
allowance. Every time this girl refrains from writing a letter, she has
really saved two cents or the value of the stamp, to say nothing of the
paper. Whenever she walks down town instead of riding, she has a right to
the nickel to add to the fund in the back of her top bureau drawer. If
she buys a ten-cent fountain-pen instead of a dollar one, she virtually
earns ninety cents. If she rents a grammar for twenty-five cents instead
of paying one dollar and a half for a new book, she is a thrifty person
who deserves the difference. Every time she declines--mournfully--to drop
in at the restaurant for dinner with a crowd of friends, or refuses to
join in a waffle-supper, Dutch treat, she is so much nearer being a
melancholy and noble capitalist.

"Yes, that's all right for you," assented Berta airily when told of this
working theory, "but supposing you don't have the money to save in the
first place? I fail to receive five dollars a month from home or even one
dollar invariably; and I always walk to town and never enter the
restaurant except to wait while you save ten cents by buying half a pound
of caramels when you want to buy a whole pound."

"They're forty cents a pound, Berta," objected scrupulous Robbie Belle.
"I really saved twenty cents yesterday, you see."

"Ah, of course, how distressingly inaccurate of me. And I also--I saved
five dollars and fourteen cents by using my wash-stand for a
writing-table instead of buying that bargain desk for four dollars and
ninety-eight cents. The extra fifteen was saved on the inkwell I did not
buy either. I say, Robbie Belle Sanders, let's save the entire sum by
denying ourselves that set of Browning we saw last week."

Robbie Belle looked grieved. "You always make fun of everything. You act
as if you didn't care."

Berta turned away for a minute, and stood gazing from the window of her
little tower room. The window was small and high, but the view was wide
and wonderful toward the purple hills in the west. At length she said
something under her breath. Robbie Belle heard it and understood. It was
only, "I'm afraid."

Robbie Belle knew that Berta was afraid of caring too much. She had
listened once in twilight confidence under the pines to the story of how
Berta had been all ready to start for college three years before, when a
sudden family misfortune changed her plans and condemned her to immediate
teaching. In the bitterness of her disappointment she had vowed never to
set her heart on any plan again.

Walking over to Berta's side Robbie Belle took the listless hand in both
her comforting ones.

"Even if we shouldn't manage it this year, you know, we could try again
next year. We might earn something extra during the summer."

"Next year!" echoed Berta under her breath. "I can't count on next
year--I dare not. You do not understand, for your scholarship is certain
through the course, while mine depends on what Prexie thinks I am worth.
I am under the eye of the faculty. Don't talk about next year. I am
pretending that this is the last time I shall be here in October, then in
November, then in December. I look at everything--the lake, the trees,
the girls, the teachers, the dear, dear library, and say, 'Good-bye!
Good-bye, my college year.' They may not help me to come back, you know.
If I really try not to expect it, I will not be disappointed in any case.
Of course, I am not worth four hundred dollars to them. I am afraid to
hope for it."

"Why, you are the brightest student here. Bea says so and you know it!"
exclaimed Robbie Belle indignantly; "there isn't any question about your
being granted another scholarship when you apply for it next spring. They
weigh everything--intellect, personality, character, conduct. Never you
fear. If they give only one scholarship in the whole college, it shall be
to you. You are superstitious: you fancy that if you do your best to
expect the worst, the best will happen, because it is always the
unexpected that happens. Only of course, that isn't true at all."

Berta was smiling mistily around into the fair face. "Dear old Robbie
Belle! Will Shakespeare was right--'there's flattery in friendship'--it
makes me rejoice. The trouble, you see, sweetheart, lies in my character.
I misdoubt me that Prexie will spurn my plea if he hears how often we
have a meeting of the fudge club at a tax of two cents per head. Let's
save up that two cents for the Opera fund."

Robbie Belle drew a deep sigh. "All right," she agreed with a doleful
glance toward the particular blue plate in which she was accustomed to
pour her share of the delicacy. "Anyway the doctor calls fudge an
'abomination.' Bea will scold because she hates scrimping. But then she
doesn't care so much as we do for music unless it is convenient."

Berta's contributions were the result of more active exertions than the
other's passive self-denial. She sat up one night till two o'clock to
dress a doll. Every fall a few hundred dolls were distributed to be
dressed by the girls for the Christmas tree at the Settlement House in
the city. Some of the students took dolls and paid other girls to make
the clothes. Berta earned a dollar by helping Bea with the three which
that impulsive young woman had rashly undertaken. In February she
composed valentines and sold them to over-busy maidens who felt unequal
to rhyming in the reaction after the midyear examinations. In March she
painted Easter eggs and in April she arranged pots of growing ferns and
flowers from the woods. By May the fund was complete and the tickets were
bought.

As the longed-for event drew nearer, Berta made a string of paper dolls
and joyfully tore off one for each passing day.

At last the morning dawned. Robbie Belle was dreaming that she had fallen
asleep in fifth hour Latin. It seemed as if the instructor called her
name and then came walking down from the platform, thump, thump, thump,
in her broad-soled shoes. It was unladylike to thump so heavily, thought
Robbie Belle in the midst of her confused dismay over having lost the
place in the text as well as forgotten the translation. The thumping
sharpened to a rat-tat-tat upon the bedroom door.

"Robbie Belle, Robbie Belle, you lazybones! The night watchman has
knocked twice already. Get up, get up this instant! We're going to hear
Grand Opera to-day! O-o-ooh!"

Robbie Belle lifted her head to listen. "Berta Abbott, you've got a
chill. I hear you shivering. Hurry into your clothes this minute. I'll
bring you the quinine."

Quinine! Berta shivering from excitement laughed softly to herself. Dear
old Robbie Belle! Quinine on this wonderful day! Listen! That was the
twittering of swallows under the eaves. A squirrel peered in at her
window, his bright eyes twinkling. It was too bad that he did not enjoy
music. But perhaps he did after all. Hark! that was a robin. And listen!
There sounded the full-throated whistle of a brown thrush. The world was
ringing with music--beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! And she was going to
hear Grand Opera to-day! That had been her most precious dream next to
coming to college. To come to college and to hear Grand Opera too!

"My cup runneth over! My cup runneth over," she chanted softly to
herself, while from Robbie Belle's room rose a faint noise of deliberate
dressing, subdued splashing, slow steps, a rustling that was almost
methodical in its rhythm.

"Berta," she announced, appearing with hat set straight and firm over her
smooth dark hair, her coat over one arm, her umbrella neatly strapped, "I
think I shall carry my Horace, for it is a two-hours' ride, and to-day is
Saturday and after Sunday comes Monday."

Berta clapped her hands over her ears, "Go away, go away to your
breakfast, miserable creature! Horace! that worldly wise old Roman! With
the river before your eyes, the beautiful river in May!"

"The next ode begins, 'O Fons Bandusiæ!'--a fountain, you understand,"
protested Robbie Belle in injured tones, "he loved the country. I wanted
to read it aloud to you and get in my practice on scansion that way. I am
learning to do it quite well. Listen! 'Splendidior vitro-o-o,'" she
declaimed, dragging out the syllables to lugubrious length.

"Dear Robbie Belle," murmured Berta pleasantly, "if you breathe one line
of that stuff on this journey I shall throw you into the river
myself--cheerfully." She nodded vigorous approval of her own sentiments,
and her contrary hair seized the opportunity to tumble down again in
resentment of impatient fingers. "Oh, Robbie Belle, come and twist this
up for me, won't you? We shall be late for the train. I don't believe we
care for breakfast anyhow."

"Not care for breakfast!" Robbie Belle shut her mouth determinedly. She
walked over to the wardrobe, pinned Berta's hat securely on the fly-away
hair, caught up her jacket, tucked the tickets into her own pocket, and
sternly marched her scatter-brained friend out of the room and down the
corridor.

"It's gone to her head," she muttered sadly as if communing with herself,
"the idea of music has gone to her head. I must address her soothingly.
Yes, yes, we're going--we're going soon, don't worry. But we're a-going
clothed and in our right mind--mine at least, and fed."

On tiptoe they flitted down to the big empty dining-room. A special
breakfast was being served to the dozen or more students who intended to
take the early train to the city. The unaccustomed stillness in the vast
apartment usually vibrating with clatter of dishes and chatter of tongues
seemed dreamlike to Berta in her exalted mood. Robbie Belle found it
necessary to exert her firmest authority in order to get Berta to eat
even a roll and swallow a cup of chocolate.

Two of the seniors who were going shopping lamented that they had
neglected to apply for opera tickets until the house had been sold out.
Berta gazed at them pityingly. To have the money and to be in the city,
and yet not to be able to go! Why hadn't they thought of it in time? She
had anticipated it years in advance. This world was full of queer
people--all sorts of people who did not care for music, and even some who
did not care for books. Wasn't it the strangest thing--not to care!

When somebody consulting her watch announced that the special electric
car was to leave the Lodge Gates for the station in seven minutes, Berta
dropped spoon and napkin in eager haste to depart. Out into the corridor
and around the balusters to the messenger room where they were required
to register their names and destination. At the foot of the broad
staircase hung the bulletin board in the pale flicker of a lowered
gas-jet. The morning light was brightening through the windows beyond.
Berta halted mechanically to scan the oblong of dark red in search of
possible new notices. Something may have been posted since chapel last
night.

Ah, yes, there was a fresh square of white tucked under the tapes that
marked the felt into convenient diamonds. Berta read it at a glance.

"All students requiring financial assistance for the coming year are
requested to make written application to the President before May 10th.
It is understood that those receiving such aid will exercise all
reasonable economy in avoiding unnecessary expenditure."

Berta did not move, though her mobile face seemed to harden in a
curiously stony expression. She read the notice again. Robbie Belle came
breezily from the messenger room.

"Anything new, Berta? You look queer." She followed the direction of the
fascinated eyes. She read it slowly and drew a deep breath.

"So we can't go after all," she said.

Berta seemed to wake up suddenly from a trance. "Robbie Belle!"

"I can't help it," doggedly though the smooth forehead had clouded in a
quick frown of pain at the cry, "it would not be honest. I didn't know
before."

"It's our own money," protested Berta defiantly.

"But our scholarships are the same as borrowed."

[Illustration: "ANYTHING NEW?"]

"The tickets are bought and paid for."

Robbie Belle caught a glimpse of figures emerging from the dining-room.
"There come those two seniors who forgot to get seats in advance. Isn't
it lucky! Now we can sell them ours."

"Give me my ticket," demanded Berta's voice sullenly, "you never cared."

"But it is not honest," repeated Robbie Belle stubbornly. "I never
thought of it in that light before. It is not honest to spend five
dollars and more for a luxury while we are living on borrowed money."

"Give--me--my--ticket."

The seniors rustled past. To Berta their laughter sounded far away. "Oh,
girls, we'll have to hurry! Hear that bell jangle."

"The conductor does it on purpose to see us run. We have three minutes
yet. Those two freshmen by the bulletin-board are going."

"It is not honest," said Robbie Belle.

Fragments of gay chatter floated back to them. "Caruso and Sembrich in
Lucia di Lammermoor! Fancy! It is the most wonderful combination of
extraordinary talent--genius. I shall certainly go if I have to stand up
every minute of the three hours."

"It is simply wicked to miss such an opportunity."

"Important part of our education, isn't it? I only wish my thesis were on
the 'Development of the Drama.' I should employ the laboratory method
most assuredly."

"The critics say that such a chance as this does not occur more than once
in a century."

"It is not honest," said Robbie Belle, back in the shadowy corridor
before the bulletin-board.

"Will you give me my ticket?"

Robbie Belle flinched before the passionate low tones, and the roseleaf
color in her cheeks went quite white. She handed Berta both tickets. "You
may do what you like with mine," she said and turned slowly away.

Berta fled in the wake of the hurrying seniors. Her head buzzed with
frantic arguments. It was her own money--she had earned it. Nobody had a
right to dictate what she should do with it. Robbie Belle never could see
more than one side of a question. To forbid unnecessary expenditure just
because she accepted a loan to carry her through college! Who was to say
whether it was unnecessary or not? The Opera was part of her musical
education. She would repay the scholarship with interest at the earliest
possible date after she began to earn a salary. What meddling insolence!
The girls who held scholarships were the brightest and finest in
college--some of them. And to treat them as if they were extravagant,
silly little spendthrifts! It was honest. Hadn't she denied herself
everything all the year--clubs and dinners and drives and flowers and
ribbons and gloves and new books and fine note-paper and that cast of the
Winged Victory which she had wanted and wanted and wanted? Not that she
assumed any credit for such self-denial--it simply had to be, that was
all. But now, this was different. She owed it to herself not to miss such
a wonderful occasion. A chance in a century--that was what the senior
said.

Ting-aling, ting-aling! jangled the bell madly. The conductor paused, his
hand on the strap. A breathless girl sprang upon the platform, darted
into the car, tossed a packet upon a convenient lap.

"There are two seats for the Opera. We can't go." And she had leaped from
the moving steps and vanished through the great iron gates of the Lodge.

Back in the dormitory before the bulletin-board Miss Bonner, the graduate
fellow, was staring at the new placard. She gave a slight start of
astonishment at a glimpse of Berta hastening past her. Then because she
had heard the story from Robbie Belle two minutes earlier, she pretended
to be absorbed in the notices, for she suspected that any comment would
start the tears that Berta was holding back. However, she was smiling to
herself after the girl had vanished up the stairs. When the gong struck
for breakfast, she halted at the faculty table to whisper a few words to
the professor in her special department. The professor answered, "How
glad I am!"

"And you really believe that it would have prejudiced the scholarship
committee against Miss Abbott, if she had persisted in this extravagance?
She has worked so hard to earn it."

"I understand," the professor was sympathetic but unswerving from her
convictions; "it seems somewhat cruel when one considers how passionately
fond of music the child is. Still you must remember that this scholarship
fund is the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnæ,
to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to
the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for
one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?"

Meanwhile Berta, unconscious of the fact that her whole college career
and the future to be moulded by it had depended upon her decision to do
right in this apparently insignificant respect, had trudged up to a
certain lonely room. Robbie Belle lifted a wet face from a consoling
pillow.

"Berta!" It was like a soft little shout of triumph. "I knew----"

Berta swallowed a lump in her throat and managed to smile a whimsical
smile from behind dewy lashes.

"Maybe we'll have clam chowder for luncheon," she said, "and then won't
those two seniors be sorry!"




CHAPTER IV

HER FRESHMAN VALENTINES


WHEN Bea straightened her head from its anxious tilt over the desk, she
drew the tip of her tongue from its perilous position between two rows of
white teeth, and heaved a mighty sigh of relief.

Then she blinked admiringly upon the white pile of envelopes lying in the
glow of the drop-light. "There! That makes fifteen valentines all for
her. She will be sure to receive more than any other senior, and that
will teach Berta Abbott a thing or two. The idea of her insisting that
her senior is more popular than my senior!"

With a smile that was rather more sleepy than dreamy, the industrious
young freshman picked up the precious missives.

"O Lila,--my magnanimous roommate,--are you asleep? Do you want to listen
to my last valentines? I intend to run down and put them in the senior
caldron presently. Is this sentimental? When I read it to Berta, she
laughed at it.

                               "My Music

             "At thy birth were gathered voices of the sea,
             Murmur of the breezes in the forest tree,
             Songs of birds and laughter--"

At this point an open umbrella, which hid the pillow on the farther
narrow bed, gave a convulsive shiver, and a fretful voice complained:

"Will you turn off that gas and stop your nonsense? Here it is midnight,
if it's an hour, and I haven't slept a wink, with that light blazing. I
know I shall fail in the written test to-morrow, Valentine's day or not."

Bea stared pensively at the Topsy-like corona above the flushed face. "I
don't believe she ever puts her hair up in curlers now, do you? She is
superior to such vanities, and anyway, it is naturally curly, you know,
and that probably makes a difference. I wonder if she even stoops to
making verses. Do you suppose she sends valentines to other girls? Of
course, she doesn't care a snap whether she receives more than any, and
is declared the most popular senior. H'm-m-m!" drifting into reverie
afresh. "I dare say I could compose a poem on that idea. For instance:

                     "I know a senior all sedate--"

The umbrella bounced tempestuously across the floor, and was followed by
a pillow driven hard and straight at a tousled head that ducked just in
time.

"U-huh!" ferociously. "Well,

                 "I know a freshman, sure as fate!
                 Who shall no longer sit up late,
                 Because her long-suffering roommate--"

Here the gas flared suddenly into darkness, and slippered feet scurried
away from the desk. The door opened and shut quickly; and Bea, her
valentines clutched safely against her dressing gown, was speeding
through the dark corridors toward the senior parlor. There a kettle,
overflowing with bits of white, swung from a tripod before the shadowy
folds of the parlor portières.

Ah! Bea, bending toward the caldron with arm extended, stiffened without
moving. She had heard something. Yes, there it was again--a muffled
footfall on the stairs near by. Hark! Down the black shaft from the cave
above came stealing a second slender figure in a flowing robe of some
pale woolly stuff. In her hands also was clasped a packet of envelopes.

"Hello, Berta!" Bea said.

"Oh, good-morning, Miss Leigh!" responded Berta, advancing with a tread
the stateliness of which was somewhat impaired by a loosely flapping
sole. "Did you rise early in order to prepare for the Latin test?"

Bea brushed aside the query with the contempt it deserved. "Are all those
for your senior? I don't think it's fair for you to copy verses out of
any old book, while every one of mine is original; and yet yours count
exactly as much. Well, anyway, I wouldn't send my senior anything that
was ordinary and unworthy of her acceptance. How many have you?"

This ignoble curiosity was likewise ignored by Miss Berta, who proceeded
with dignified slowness to drop her valentines one by one into the
caldron. Bea, with lingering care, deposited her contribution on the very
top. One slid over the edge, and in rescuing it she disturbed a fold of
the portière. A glimpse within set her eyes to sparkling.

"Berta, there's an open fire in the senior parlor, and it's still red!"

"Ho," whispered Berta, in reply to the unspoken challenge, "I'm not
afraid! Let's," and two flowing, woolly robes glided into the warm room,
with its heart of glowing coals. One bold intruder nestled in the biggest
arm-chair, the other fumbled for the tongs.

"Aren't we wicked! Robbie wouldn't do it." Berta cuddled deeper among the
comforting cushions. "But--oh!--doesn't it feel good in here!"

Bea poked a coal until it split into a faint blue blaze. "We're worse
than wicked. We're cheeky,--that's what,--coming into this room without
being invited. Suppose some senior should discover us!" She paused,
smitten by the terror of the new thought. "Just suppose my senior should
find me here! She has a horror of anything underhanded or sly. I should
die of shame!" It was a genuine groan, and Berta was too startled to
laugh.

"I guess it isn't very nice of us," she acknowledged meekly.

"I'm going this instant." Bea's hand was on the portière when a rustling
in the kettle caught her attention. Through a rift between the folds she
spied lace ruffles about a delicate hand that was dropping envelopes down
upon the others. Over the tripod a face appeared for one moment in the
dim light, and then was gone. Light steps retreated swiftly, and a door
closed not far away on the senior corridor. Bea had recognized her
senior.

When the two midnight visitors stole timorously forth a moment later,
Bea's eyes traveled wistfully toward the big envelope lying squarely on
top of all the valentines.

Berta regarded her keenly. "Why don't you march up and read the name, if
you want to so much?" was her blunt question.

"She must be pretty fond of somebody," whispered Bea, "if she stayed up
till now just to write valentines for her. I wish----"

"Do you think it is sneaking to look?" persisted Berta. "If she objected
to having it seen, she might have turned it address down."

"It is address down," murmured Bea, sadly, "and I know it would be
dishonorable to try to see it. She herself would call any act like that
contemptible."

At this crisis Berta sneezed--sneezed hard and long and with suspicious
vehemence. And when Bea cast one lingering farewell glance toward the
caldron, she perceived that the topmost missives were sliding over the
edge in the breeze raised by that gusty sneeze. The big square envelope
tumbled clumsily down upon its back and lay staring, quite close to the
flickering gas. Bea's wilful eyes rested on it one illuminating instant,
and then leaped away, while her cheeks whitened suddenly. The name on the
valentine was that of the senior herself.

Poor little Bea! After the first dazed moment she began to select and
gather up the fifteen valentines which she had deposited five minutes
before.

"Why, Beatrice Leigh!" gasped Berta. "You haven't any right to take them
back after you have mailed them!"

"Do you imagine for one moment that I shall give valentines to a girl who
sends them to herself? And the senior who receives the most is declared
the most popular in the class!"

"But--but," stammered Berta, "perhaps she thought--perhaps she didn't
think----"

"And I was afraid a girl who could do a thing like that might blame us
for entering the senior parlor uninvited!"

Bea's hands fell listlessly at her sides as she walked away. "I don't
care," she said. And Berta, who was wise in some unexpected ways,
wondered why people always said they did not care just when they cared
the most.

Next day various anonymous verses were delivered at the door where Lila
Allan wrestled with the rules for indirect discourse, while her roommate,
chin in hand, stared gloomily out at the snow-darkened sky. Valentines
were silly, anyway, and it was a shame for any one to waste time and
energy in hunting foolish rhymes for eyes and hair and smiles and hearts.
How could a person be sure about anybody, if a girl with a face like a
white flower could send valentines to herself with the address side down?

All day long the senior caldron bubbled notes faithfully till the very
last minute. After chapel the class fluttered into their little parlor,
with its fire blazing merrily and its shaded lamps glowing. Somebody,
disguised in a long gray beard and flowing gray robe, stalked in amid
laughter and clapping, and began to distribute the contents of the
kettle.

Berta, hanging at a perilous angle over the stairway just outside, felt
some one halt silently beside her, and glanced up into Bea's eyes.

"Hello!" she said, in an excited whisper. "Can you see all right, Bea? I
think she has called my senior's name about twenty times already. Look
how the valentines are heaped in her lap! Where's your senior?"

"That person with the gray beard," began Bea, calmly, only to be
interrupted by, "Why, so it is! What fun! Where does she put the
envelopes addressed to herself? Oh, yes, I see. Why----" Berta caught
Bea's skirts in a firm grasp. "See here, young lady, you'll go over the
banisters head first if you don't undouble yourself pretty soon.
You'll----"

"That's the very valentine--that big, square envelope in her hand this
instant! She sent it to herself----"

Bea saw Saint Valentine read aloud the name, and then stop short, staring
at the address in a puzzled way. She turned the envelope over to examine
its back, and study the waxen seal. Suddenly she bent her head in the
delighted laughter that Bea once had thought so charming. She laughed
till the long gray beard threatened to shake itself free.

"Isn't that the greatest joke! I was scribbling verses last night till I
was too sleepy to see straight. I didn't mean to send this to myself. How
perfectly ridiculous!" and she tossed the innocent missive into the fire.

Outside on the shadowy stairway Berta gave a little squeal of pain.
"Ouch! You're pinching me black and blue! Why, Bea, Bea Leigh, whatever
in the world----"

A packet of white, bound with an elastic, went flying through the air, to
fall with a rustling plop into the half-empty caldron. An inquisitive
senior going out to investigate spied only the deserted stairs, and heard
nothing but four scampering feet on the corridor overhead. Saint
Valentine, with a voice that dropped lower and lower into a muffled
murmur, read her own name fifteen times in succession, and blushed
rose-pink, from gray beard to powdered hair, while the other seniors
laughed and laughed.

Two minutes after the valentines had been counted and the result
announced Bea was waltzing about Berta's room, with that unwilling
captive in her arms.

"Ho! Who says your senior is more popular than my senior now?" she
jeered. "Who won that time, I want to know?"

"Before I'd have a senior who sends valentines to herself!" grumbled
Berta wickedly, to the ceiling.

"Ho!" chanted shameless Bea. "I knew it was a mistake all along. That's
the reason I didn't tear up my valentines."

"Yes?" commented Miss Berta, with an inflection so maddening that in
three seconds she was fleeing for her life.




CHAPTER V

THE GIFTIE GIE US


It had been raining for a week. Berta was writing a poem, her elbows on
the desk, her hair clutched in one hand, her pen in the other. At the
window Robbie Belle was working happily over her curve-tracing, now and
then drawing back to gaze with admiration at the sweeping lines of her
problem. Once the slanting beat of the drops against the pane caught her
eye, and she paused for a moment to consider their angle of incidence.
She decided that she liked curves better than angles. She did not wonder
why, as Berta would have done, but having recognized the fact of
preference turned placidly back to her instruments.

Splash! came a fiercer gust of rain, and Berta stirred uneasily, tossing
her head as if striving subconsciously to shake off a vague irritation of
hearing. Another heavier sound was mingling with the steady patter.
Rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub! Robbie Belle glanced up and listened, her
pencil uplifted.

"It's Bea," she said, "she's drumming with her knuckles on the floor in
the corridor. She says that it is against her principles to knock on the
door when it has an engaged sign on it. Shall I say come?"

Apparently Berta did not hear the question. With her chin grasped firmly
in one fist, she was staring very hard at a corner of the ceiling where
there was nothing in particular. Robbie looked at her and sighed, but the
resignation in the sigh was transfigured by loving awe. She picked up her
pencil in patient acquiescence. Berta must not be disturbed.

"Chir-awhirr, chir-awhirr, tweet, tweet, tweet!" It was Bea's best
soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen
to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. Bravo,
encore! Chir-awhirr! Encore!

                 "'Make me over, Mother April,
                 When the sap begins to stir.
                 When thy flowery hand delivers
                 All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
                 And thy great heart throbs and quivers
                 To revive the joys that were,
                 Make me over, Mother April,
                 When the sap begins to stir.'"

Robbie Belle was leaning back in her chair to listen in serene enjoyment.
She loved to hear Bea sing. Berta was listening, too, but with an absent
expression, as if still in a dream.

The voice outside the door declared itself again. "Ahem, written by Bliss
Carmen. Sung by Beatrice Leigh. Ahem!" It was a noticeably emphatic ahem,
and certainly deserved a more appreciative reply than continued silence
from within. After a minute's inviting pause, the singer piped up afresh.

                "'Make me over in the morning
                From the rag-bag of the world.
                Scraps of deeds and duds of daring,
                Home-brought stuff from far-sea faring,
                Faded colors once so flaring,
                Shreds of banners long since furled,
                Hues of ash and hints of glory
                From the rag-bag of the world.' Ahem!"

The concluding cough was so successfully convulsive that Robbie Belle's
mouth opened suddenly.

"It must be something important," she said.

Berta woke up from her trance. "Come!" she called.

At the first breath of the syllable, the door flew open with a specially
prepared bang, and Bea shot in with an instantaneous and voluntary
velocity that carried her to the centre of the rug.

"Oh, girls!" she exclaimed in the excited tone of a breathless and
delighted messenger bringing great and astonishing news, "it's raining!"

In the ensuing stillness, she could almost hear the disgusted thud of
expectation dashed to earth.

"Villain!" said Berta, and swung around to her interrupted poem.

Robbie's puzzled stare developed slowly into a smile. "I think that is a
joke," she said.

Then Bea laughed. She collapsed on the sofa and shook from her boots to
her curls. It was contagious laughter that made Robbie chuckle in
sympathy and Berta grin broadly at a discreet pigeon-hole of her desk.
When the visitor resumed sufficient self-possession to enable her to
enunciate, she sat up and inquired anxiously,

"Did you hear me sing?"

Berta regarded her solemnly. "We did," she answered.

"Yes," said Robbie Belle.

"Well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to change. I'm going to be
made over, Mother April. I'm going to turn into a genius for a while.
I've always wanted to be a genius. It's no fun to be systematic and
steady and conscientious, and so forth, is it, Robbie Belle? At least it
isn't very much fun, considering what might be done with our
opportunities. So I intend to behave as if I had an artistic temperament.
I am going to let my work pile up, cut late, skip meals, break
engagements, never answer letters, give in to moods, be generally
irresponsible, and so forth, just like Berta. I'm going to----"

"What!"

Bea laughed again mischievously at the sound of outraged dignity in
Berta's voice. "Yes, I am. I have the spring fever: I don't want to do
anything, and I don't want to do nothing either. In fact, this is the
single solitary thing I do want to do. That's the reason why it will be
so agreeable to be a genius. At least, it will be agreeable to me, if not
to my contemporaries and companions. I shall do exactly as I please at
the moment. Another reason will be the thrill of novelty--I'm simply
dying for excitement."

"Thrill of novelty!" groaned Berta. "I infer that you never do as you
please. You continually 'sackerifice' yourself----"

"Yes, yes, of course, but I was afraid you hadn't noticed." Bea raised
her fingers to smooth the corners of her mouth straight. "Now, you've
been growing worse--I mean, more and more of a genius ever since entering
college. I myself ought to be called Prexie's Assistant, somewhat after
the order of Miss Edgeworth's 'Parent's Assistant,' you know, because my
career has been such an awful warning to the undergraduate. But you're an
example----"

"I am not a genius," Berta spoke with biting severity of accent; "Lucine
Brett is a genius, and I despise her."

"You used to despise her," put in Robbie Belle gently.

Berta caught her lip between her teeth for a fleeting instant of
irritation, for she was not naturally meek. Then she glanced at Robbie
with a quick smile all the sweeter for the under-throb of repentance over
her impatient impulse. "All right, I used to long ago. But to return to
our guest. I am not a genius, I hasten to remark again. Furthermore I
shall be excessively obliged if Miss Leigh will march out of this
apartment and stay where she belongs."

In the pause which was occupied by Bea in considering a choice of retorts
stupendous, Robbie spoke again.

"I think Bea misses Lila while she is in the infirmary," she said.

Bea swung magnificently on her heel. "I have decided that the proper
rejoinder is a crushing silence. I wish you good afternoon." At the door
she halted. "And I shall be a genius for a spell. You just watch me and
see. Shelley was lawless, you know, and Burns and Carlyle, I guess, and
Goethe and George Eliot----"

[Illustration: "OH, THANK YOU; I DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO EAT"]

"What!"

This was a shout of such indignation that Bea vanished instanter. A
moment later she poked her head around the lintel.

"Well, they were," she said, "and so are you. It is a marvel to me how
you hoodwink Prexie about your work. Pure luck! Vale!"

Berta's repartee consisted of a sofa pillow aimed accurately at the
diminishing crack.

The next day was Saturday. Bea failed to appear at breakfast--a
catastrophe which had not occurred before in the memory of the oldest
junior. Berta who usually arrived herself half an hour late headed a
procession of inquiring friends, three of whom bore glasses of milk and
plates of rolls to supply the dire omission. A succession of crescendo
taps at her door was at length rewarded by a drowsy-eyed apparition in
bath-robe and worsted slippers.

"Oh, thank----" she exclaimed at sight of the sympathetic group, and
suddenly remembered that she must be different from her ordinary self. "I
don't want anything to eat. I didn't feel exactly like getting up early.
I seem to prefer to be alone this morning." And she managed, though with
a hand that faltered at the misdeed, to shut the door in their astonished
faces.

"Well, I never!" "What has happened?" "Was it a telegram?" "How perfectly
atrocious!" "Is she sick?" "Beatrice Leigh to treat us with such
unutterable rudeness!"

Berta listened with a queer little smile on her sensitively cut lips.
Once she noticed a hasty twist of the knob as if Bea had snatched at it
from the other side under the prick of the comments floating over the
transom. As she walked slowly away the smile faded before a shadowing
recollection. She was wondering if her own manner had truly been so
unpardonable on that autumn morning when Robbie had carried her a baked
apple with cream on it and plum bread besides. It had certainly been
irritating to be interrupted in the middle of that rondel for the sake of
which she had skipped Sunday breakfast. She had not forgotten how amazed
and disappointed Robbie had looked with the saucer in one hand, the plate
in the other, while the door swung impatiently back to its place. But
then, the poem was sufficient excuse for that discourtesy, Berta assured
herself in anxiety to justify her behavior. If she had waited to be
polite, the thought and the rhymes would doubtless have scattered beyond
recall. Nobody could condemn her for slamming the door and hurrying again
to her desk. She had saved the rondel, and it had been printed in the
Monthly. That was worth some sacrifice, even of manners to dear old
Robbie. She always understood and forgave such small transgressions of
the laws of friendship. Only it certainly looked different when somebody
else did it.

An hour or so later while Berta was bending devotedly over her notes in
the history alcove of the library, she was vaguely aware of a newcomer
sauntering carelessly behind her chair. A heavy book clattered to the
floor, and somebody's elbow in stooping to pick it up nudged her arm. Her
pen went scratching in a mad zigzag across the neat page and deposited a
big tear of red ink where it suddenly stopped.

"Oh, I'm sorry," exclaimed Bea repentantly, for she was indeed the
culprit; "it's horrid to be heedless on purpose. I didn't know it would
really do any harm."

Berta glanced up quickly from her blotter. So Bea considered a reckless
disregard for books and persons also a quality of genius. Berta felt a
slow blush creeping up to her brow at the candid memory of her tendency
to bump into things and brush against people when in a dreamy mood--and
to pass on without even a beg pardon.

"You're evidently new to the business, my cautious and calculating young
friend," she whispered, "you should have ignored the resultant calamity.
Ah--why, child!" she stared in surprise, "your collar is pinned crooked
and your turnover is flying loose at one end, and your hair is coming
down. You look scandalous."

Bea looked triumphant also. "It's an artistic disarray," she explained.
"It's hard work because I've slipped into the habit of being prim and
precise, and I had to bend a pin intentionally. Four girls already have
warned me about my hair falling down. It worries me a lot and yet it
doesn't give the same effect as yours. Does yours feel loose and
straggly?"

Berta's hand flew to her head. "You sinner! Mine is just as usual."

"Yes, I know it," assented Bea innocently, "it's a negligee style. I'm
being a geni----"

"Go away!" Berta snatched up her bottle of red ink. "Fly, villain,
depart, withdraw, retreat, abscond, decamp,--in short, go away!"

Bea went, holding her neck stiffly on one side to balance the sensation
of unsteadiness above her ears. Berta watched her with a wavering
expression that veered from wrathful amusement to uneasy reflectiveness.
Was it really true that she dressed so untidily as this little scamp made
out? Perhaps she did slight details once in a while, but though not
scrupulously dainty like Lila, still she tried to be neat enough on the
whole. Could it be possible that the other girls criticised her so
severely as this?

The suspicion bothered her so effectually that she left the library five
minutes early and hurried to her room for a few renovating touches before
luncheon. Her hair caused her such extraordinary pains that she was late
in reaching the table. She found that Bea had usurped her place at the
head, but forgot to object in the confusion of being greeted with:
"Heigho, Berta, what's happened?" "You're spick and span enough for a
party." "Are you going to town this afternoon?"

"Young ladies!" Berta ignored the warm color that she felt rising slowly
under her dark skin, "I am astonished at your manners. Don't you know
that you should never refer to an individual's personal appearance? I
read that in a book on etiquette. You may allude to my money, to my
brains, to the beauty of my soul, but you must not remark upon my looks.
I don't understand the principle of the thing, unless it is that
compliments on the other three articles fail to injure the character,
whereas flattery with regard to my pulchritude----"

Bea's hand shot into the air and waved frantically.

"Please, teacher, what is that funny word?"

"Go to the Latin lexicon, thou ignoramus."

"I can't," said Bea, "you borrowed mine and never brought it back. It's
being a----"

"But aren't you going anywhere?" asked Robbie Belle who had been filling
Berta's plate and pouring her milk during the discourse.

Bea sent a bewitching smile straight into Berta's eyes. "I'm 'most sure
she is going to give me a swimming lesson at half past four. Then if it
is still raining this evening, we can all swim over to the chapel for the
concert. Please, Berta."

"All right," acquiesced Berta carelessly. "I will do it because I am so
noble and you are a literary person, though how in this world of
incomprehensibilities you managed to get elected to that editorial board
passes my powers of apperception. Robbie, will you be so kind as to reach
me that saltcellar?"

"You ought to say, 'Salt!' at the beginning, and then while you are
putting in the rest of the words, she can be handing it over," advised
Bea; "ah, what was the thought I was about to think?"

She paused in dispensing the main dish and rolled up her eyes vacantly
for a moment before she dropped the spoon without a glance at the cloth
to see if it left a stain and rising walked dreamily out of the
dining-room.

The other girls stared. Robbie looked alarmed till Gertrude caught the
likeness and explained: "It's 'sincerest flattery' for you, Berta.
Imitation, you understand. When an idea strikes you, you drop everything
and wander away while Robbie or Bea picks up the spoon and goes on
ladling out the stuff in the dish at your place. What a monkey!"

"No, a missionary," corrected Berta, her eyes and mouth contradicting
each other as usual. This time her eyes tried to hide a troubled spark in
their depths while her mouth twitched over the joke of it all. "She is
posing as an awful example."

"Here I am again!" Bea appeared suddenly in her seat. "I find I'm
considerably hungry still," she vouchsafed in response to a chorus of
taunts and jeers. "Ideas aren't filling, so to speak. At least, mine
aren't--and they most of them belong to other people; hence I infer that
other people's aren't either. Is that plain, my dear young and giddy
friends? Now, somebody, applesauce!" she called, and added politely,
"please pass it."

Berta regarded her sternly. "Beatrice Leigh, you are running this scheme
pretty far into the ground. When you reach bed-rock, something is likely
to get a bump. Take care! Remember!"

"Thank you, yes, Berta. Half-past four at the swimming-tank in the
gymnasium. I'll be there. Trust me!"

"Trust you!" echoed Berta in withering scorn.

Bea lifted a face bearing a suitably wounded expression.

"I trust you," she murmured in touchingly plaintive tones. "I shall be in
the water at the stroke of the half hour--in the icy water. Promise that
you will not fail me."

"All right!" Berta dismissed the engagement from her mind with a heedless
assent. An hour later while she was absorbed in looking over the week's
daily themes which she had found in the box, Robbie walked in rather
disconsolately.

"Bea's writing a poem, too," she said; "she scowled at me."

Berta frowned in abstraction. "Yes," she muttered, "yes, yes."

Robbie looked at her and then stared out at the steady pall of rain. "I
think I shall go swimming with you, if you want me."

"Do come." It was a mechanical response while Berta's eyes narrowed in
the intensity of her application. "Now I wonder what that question-mark
on the margin can mean. She is the vaguest critic I ever had. Suggestive,
I reckon, and nothing else."

Robbie sighed. "Bea always used to be interested in everything. I wish
she wouldn't write poems. She walked right past four girls and didn't see
them. They were astonished. They asked me if she was sick or anything.
Her eyes were sort of rolled up in her head, as if she were being
oblivious on purpose."

"Um-m," replied Berta brilliantly from the depths of her own
obliviousness, "quite likely. Alas! there is another questionable
question-mark. I do wish she weren't so stingy with her red ink."

Robbie sighed again and looked at the clock. "It will be half past four
in two hours," she volunteered.

Berta pushed back her hair with an impatient gesture. "Robbie Belle, the
longer it rains, the more loquacious you become. Do go and write a note
to Lila, or darn stockings or something. I have a committee meeting at
three, and you bother me dreadfully, with your chatter. Do run along,
there's a dear."

Robbie rose and wandered away forlornly. Even though she did not feel
like studying, she half wished that she had not finished the preparation
of Monday's lessons. College on a rainy Saturday afternoon, when all your
friends are writing poems, is not a very cheerful place.

At half-past four Berta was in the midst of a fiery argument about the
program for the Junior Party to the seniors. The dispute concerned some
fine point of æsthetic taste in the choice of paper and position of
monogram. The stroke of the half hour reminded her of the engagement with
Bea, but she lightly pushed aside the thought as of no consequence in
comparison with the present emergency.

It was ten minutes to five when she seized an umbrella and scurried
across the campus to the gymnasium. There in the dusk of fading light
from the clouded sky outside she beheld the swimming-tank deserted, its
surface still glinting in soft ripples as if from recent plunging.

At sound of a rustle in one of the dressing-rooms, Berta called Bea's
name. It was Robbie's voice that answered her.

"Bea's gone out walking."

"Out walking?" echoed Berta scandalized and incredulous.

"Yes, she was here in the water at half-past four, just as she had said
she would be. She waited for you, and tried to swim at the end of a
curtain pole. I held it steady for her, but when she was the teacher, she
let me duck under. And we weren't sure about the stroke anyhow. And we
kept getting colder and colder."

"Oh!" the voice sounded as if suddenly enlightened. "At what time did you
go in?"

"It was after three, and she waited for you till twenty minutes to five.
Then she said she thought it would be interesting to go up to the orchard
and gather apple-blossoms with rain-drops fresh on the petals. She said
it would be poetic and erratic and a lot of fun. So she went. She said it
would be more like a real genius if she went alone, and so I didn't go
with her. Besides that, she took my umbrella, and it isn't big enough for
two."

"It is queer that she did not wait longer," commented Berta wonderingly.

"She said it would be more whimsical and unexpected to stroll off in that
eccentric way. She explained how she is being made over, Mother April,
from the rag-bag of the world; and so she has to be different."

"I hope that she gets very wet indeed," said Berta, "and I don't see why
I should worry."

Robbie's voice answered, "Bea worried about you that day last fall when
you went off alone in that storm to find fringed gentians. The branches
were crashing down in the wind, and one girl had seen a tramp out on that
lonely road. You said you could take care of yourself, but we worried."

"Oh, that was different," exclaimed Berta. "I am perfectly capable of
judging for myself. But Bea is such a scatterbrain that I can't help
feeling"--she hesitated, then added as if to herself, "There isn't any
sense in feeling responsible. She is old enough----"

"I can't hear when you mumble," called Robbie.

"Bea is an awful idiot," replied Berta in a louder key. "Did you catch
that valuable bit of information, Robbie Belle?"

"It sounds," spoke Robbie with unexpected astuteness, "as if you are
really worrying after all."

"Does it?" groaned Berta; "well, then I am an idiot too."

She sternly refused to look anxious even when the dressing-gong found the
wanderer still absent in the rain. At six Berta started for the
dining-room, leaving Robbie hovering at Bea's open door with a supply of
hot water, rough towels, dry stockings, and spirits of camphor. In the
leaden twilight of the lower corridor a draggled figure passed with a
sodden drip of heavy skirts and the dull squashing of water in soaked
shoes.

"Where are the apple-blossoms?" asked Berta in polite greeting as they
met at the elevator.

"I've b-b-b-been studying b-b-b-bobolinks," Bea's teeth chattered. "It's
original to follow birds in the rain."

"But"--Berta's eyes snapped, "I myself when I did it I wore a gym suit
and a mackintosh and rubber boots. Of all the idiots!"

"'O wad some power the giftie gie us,'" chanted Bea's tongue between
clicks,

                   "'To see oursels as ithers see us,
                   It wad fra mony a blunder free us,
                   And foolish notion.'"

Then as Berta took a threatening step in her direction, she broke into a
run. "I think I'll take some exercise now," she called back mockingly as
she fled up the stairs.

At midnight Berta was roused wide awake by an insistent rapping on the
wall between her room and Bea's. Startled at last wide awake, she asked
what was the trouble. Upon receiving no audible reply, she hurried around
through the corridor to the door. She heard the key turned as she grasped
the knob. An instant later she felt Bea sway against her and stand
choking for breath, her hands to her chest.

"It's croup," she gasped. "The doctor! Run!"

Berta ran. She ran as she had never run before. Down the endless corridor
and up the stairs, two steps at a time. Then a hail of frantic knocks on
the doctor's door brought her rushing to answer. In four minutes they
were back beside Bea's bed, and the doctor's orders kept Berta flying,
till after a limitless space of horror and struggle she heard dimly from
the distance: "She'll do now." Whereupon Berta sat down quietly in a
chair and fainted.

The next day was Sunday. Berta carried Bea her breakfast.

"Good-morning, Beatrice," she said. "I've decided that I am tired of
being a genius."

"So am I," said Bea.

"No more poems!" cried Robbie Belle and clapped her hands. "Oh, goodie!"




CHAPTER VI

A WAVE OF REFORM


Bea did her hair high for the first time in public on the evening of the
Philalethean Reception in her sophomore year. As was to have been
expected, this event of vital importance demanded such careful
preparation that she missed the address in chapel altogether and was late
for the first dance. When at last she really put in an appearance--and a
radiant appearance it was, with cheeks flushed from the ardor of her
artistic labors, she found the revelry in full swing, so to speak. The
corridors and drawing-rooms were thronged with fair daughters and brave
sons. Naturally the daughters were in the majority, most of them fair
with the beauty of youth. The sons were necessarily brave to face the
cohorts of critical eyes that watched them from all sides.

Two of the critical eyes belonged to Bea as she stood on the stairs for a
few minutes and mourned that her handsomest cousin was not there to
admire her new white crêpe, and also to be admired of the myriad
guestless girls. She caught a glimpse of Lila in rose-colored mull as she
promenaded past with a cadet all to herself. Berta and Robbie were
walking together in the ceaseless procession from end to end of the
second floor corridor, while the orchestra played and the couples whirled
in the big dining-room. They were talking just as earnestly as if they
had not seen each other every day for a year. Bea's dimple twinkled and
she took a step forward under the impulse to join them for the fun of
chaffing them about such polite devotion.

At that moment Gertrude touched her shoulder.

"Oh, Beatrice Leigh, have you anybody engaged for this number and the
next? My brother has turned up unexpectedly, and I haven't a single
partner for him. Won't you take care of him while I rush around to fill
his program? Do! There's a dear!"

"All right," said Bea, "can he talk?"

"N-no, not much, but you can, and he's awfully easy to entertain. Tell
him about the girls or college life or anything. He's interested in it
all. Will you? Oh, please! There goes Sara now. I've got to catch her
first thing."

"Bring on the brother," exclaimed Bea magnanimously, "I'll talk to him."

And she did. Twenty minutes later, when Gertrude in her frantic search
through the shifting crowds explored the farthest group of easy chairs in
senior corridor, she discovered Miss Bea still chattering vivaciously to
a rapt audience of one.

"I've been telling him about our playing at politics last month," she
paused to explain; "he was interested."

The brother smiled down at her. "It is certainly a most entertaining
story," he said.

"Things generally are when Bea tells them," commented Gertrude, "that is
one of her gifts."

"Oh, thank you!" Bea swept her a curtsey. "But don't hurry. Didn't you
know that I promised him a dance as a reward for listening to my
dissertation on reform. Some day I'll maybe tell you the story."

This is the story:

Did Gertrude ever tell you about our playing at politics when we were
sophomores? Possibly you have heard politics defined as present history,
and history as past politics. On that understanding, this tale is a
history. It is the history of a great reform. When I sit down to reflect,
a luxury for which I seldom have time even in vacation, it really seems
to me that I have been reforming all my life. Lila has reformed a good
deal since she entered college, and Berta has been almost as bad as I.
Robbie Belle is the best one among us, but she does not realize it. That
is the reason why she is such a dear. She never preaches--that is, never
unless it is her plain duty as at that time in the north tower, when we
were freshmen, you remember. If she disapproves of any of our schemes,
she simply says she doesn't want to do it. That was what she said when
the rest of us proposed to masquerade as a gang of wardheelers on
election day.

You know what wardheelers are, I suppose. They are politicians who hang
around the polls and watch the voting and see that people vote for the
right party, or the wrong party, for the matter of that. It all depends
on which side they belong. When they notice anybody going to vote for the
other side, they sort of intimidate him, tell him to get away, or else
push him out of line or punch him in the head or something like that.
Sometimes they stuff the ballot-boxes, too, or go from one poll to
another, voting over and over.

Now Robbie Belle had joined in with all the other fun that autumn. There
were imitation rallies and parades and receptions to candidates and mock
banquets with real speeches and fudges and crackers to eat. She made a
perfectly splendid presidential candidate at one of the meetings. She
looked ever so much like him too as she sat gravely on the platform with
her hair parted on one side, and a borrowed silk hat clasped to the bosom
of her brother's dress suit. When all at once her face crinkled in a
sudden irresistible smile, even the seniors said she was dear. But this
time she said she'd rather not be a wardheeler. She wouldn't come to a
banquet of the gang the night before election day either. She said she
guessed she didn't want to.

Berta and Lila and I collected butter and sugar and milk at the dinner
table that evening. In our dormitory we are allowed to carry away bread
and milk to our rooms, but we are not supposed to take sugar or butter
for fudges. That seemed awfully stingy to us then; for in the pantry
there were barrels of sugar, great cans of milk, hundreds and thousands
of little yellow butterballs piled on big platters. We thought it
wouldn't do any harm to use a tiny bit of it all for our banquet.

At dinner I slid two butterballs into my glass of milk, and Lila filled
her glass with sugar from the bowl and then poured enough milk over it to
hide the grainy look. Robbie Belle kept her eyes in another direction,
but Berta said we had a right to one of the balls anyhow, because she had
not eaten butter all day. Berta is the brightest girl in the class and
she can argue about everything, and let the other person choose her side
of the question first too. It was not until later that she reformed from
that tendency to juggle with her intellect, as Prexie calls it.

Well, Lila and I marched down the long dining-room, past the seniors and
the faculty table, with our glasses held up in plain sight. As soon as we
reached the corridor in unmolested safety, Lila gave a skip so joyous
that some drops spattered on the floor.

She said, "Nobody caught us that time."

"Hush!" I jogged her elbow so that unluckily more milk splashed on the
rubber matting, "there's Martha."

Martha, you know--or probably you don't know until I tell you--was a
freshman who roomed with Lila and me that year. She was the dearest
little conscientious child with big eyes that were always staring at us
solemnly and giving me the shivers. She appeared to think so much more
than she spoke that we respected her a lot and tried to set her a good
example.

Martha was waiting for the elevator. She turned around and gazed at us
without saying a word. She is considerably like Robbie Belle in her
exasperating power of silence, but neither of them does it on purpose.

Unfortunately just then a senior behind her turned around too and said,
"Nobody catches anybody here. This is a college, not a boarding school."

Now such a remark as that was distinctly unkind, not so much because
either Lila or I had ever been to a boarding school, for we hadn't, as
because we wished we had. We had devoured all the stories about them and
envied the girls in them. We had hoped that we would find some of the
same kind of fun at college itself.

Lila blushed, and I could not think of any repartee that would be
appropriate, especially as Martha was staring so hard at the glass of
sugar. I had noticed all the fall that she was an odd child about candy.
She never would touch a mouthful of any that we made--and we made it
pretty often--maybe four times a week. She always just shook her head and
said she'd rather not.

It was a relief to hear the elevator come rattling up from the first
floor. The dining-room is on the second, you see, though I don't know
that this fact has any bearing on the story; still it may supply local
color or realism or something like that. Well, we entered the elevator,
and there stood a junior in the corner. This junior chanced to be an
editor of the college magazine which had offered a ten dollar prize for
the best short story handed in before October twentieth. She glanced at
us and then stared hard at Martha till we had passed the third floor, and
at the fourth she walked out behind us and spoke to Martha. She said,
"Miss Reed, I think I am not premature in congratulating you upon the
story which you submitted in the contest. You will receive official
notice of your victory before very long." And then she smiled the nicest
sweetest smile at sight of Martha's face. It was like a burst of
sunshine--anybody would have smiled. I hugged her--Martha, not the
junior, because I am not well acquainted with her, you understand--but I
wanted to hug everybody. Lila squeezed Martha so hard that she squeaked
out loud.

"Oh," sighed the little freshman almost to herself, "now I can send
mother a birthday present."

Wasn't that dear of her to think of giving it away first thing! Of course
some girls would have thought of having a spread to celebrate and invite
in all the crowd; but Martha was only a freshman and probably had no
college spirit as yet. Her remark seemed to remind Lila of something, for
she quite jumped and exclaimed, "Why, you baby, I had forgotten all about
that two dollars and seventy-five cents I borrowed of you last month. And
here it is only the sixth of November, but my allowance is nearly gone.
Why didn't you poke up my memory?"

"And I owe her ninety cents," said I.

The little freshman walked on with her hands clasped high up over her
necktie. "Will they give me the prize soon?" she asked softly, "because
the birthday is Thursday, and to-day is Monday, and it takes two days to
get there."

Lila looked at me and I looked at Lila. "We can scrape it together
somehow," she said. Then she touched Martha on the shoulder. "Do you want
to buy it to-morrow?" she inquired, "because if you do, you shall. We'll
manage it somehow. We'll pay you what we owe, and then you can buy a
present even if the prize doesn't arrive in time."

"Oh, thank you!" It was strange to see how voluble happiness was making
the child. "Will you really? I've wanted and wanted, but I couldn't ask.
I've got an engagement down town to try on my gymnasium suit to-morrow
afternoon and I shall be so glad. I can mail it then."

"All right," said I, "we'll get it for you."

Then we forgot all about it till noon the next day. That was election day
and full of excitement, even if we hadn't been late to breakfast, because
the fudges kept us awake the night before. Martha had gone into her room
early to study. Though she had closed the door I am afraid the girls made
a lot of noise; and she woke up with a headache. Of course Berta and I
and the others had a right to cut late if we wanted to do so, but we
didn't mean to keep anybody from working.

Martha returned from breakfast just as I was catching together a tiny
hole in my stocking above the shoe. It wasn't really my stocking, for I
had lost mine by sending them unmarked to the laundry, and so I had
borrowed these from Martha. They were her finest best ones, I believe,
and very nice, though her clothes generally seemed shabby. This morning
she told us to hurry down please, because the maid was feeling miserable.
We did hurry and tried not to complain of the cold cocoa or the tough
steak, though it is certainly the maid's duty to get fresh hot things no
matter how late the girls are. She couldn't find our favorite crescent
rolls in the pantry or down-stairs in the bakery or anywhere. Before we
were through eating, the other maids had cleared away their breakfast
dishes and had their tables all set for luncheon. Our maid was naturally
slow, I suspect.

After breakfast we had barely time to smooth the counterpanes over sheets
and blankets that lay in wrinkles. They looked pretty well on top, but
honestly I was relieved to have Martha and her big eyes out of the way.
Though we snatched our books and ran through the corridors we were two
minutes tardy in reaching the Latin room. The instructor was so irritable
that she laid down her book and the whole class waited while Lila and I
tiptoed to our seats in the middle of the last row.

With all the campaign excitement of course we had let our work get
crowded out, and the other girls appeared to be in the same fix. When the
most dazzling star in the class flunked on a grammatical reference, the
instructor bit her lip and sent the question flying up one row and down
another as fast as the students could shake their heads. As it came
leaping nearer and nearer to us, Lila remembered a college story about a
girl sliding from her place and kneeling behind the seat in front till
the question had passed on over the vacant spot. Lila was so agitated
that she forgot how conspicuous we had been in entering late. She slipped
out of her seat and hid like the girl in the story. Then fell an awful
stillness. The question stopped right there, hovering over the empty
place. Everybody waited. The instructor set her mouth in grimmer lines,
and waited, her eyes glued to the spot from where Lila had vanished.
Those in front turned around to look. Lila knelt there waiting and
waiting for the question to be passed on to me. I shook my head as
vigorously as I dared, but nobody paid any attention. Lila waited and
waited; the instructor waited; everybody waited and waited, till Lila's
knees ached so that she lifted her face and peeked. She peeked straight
into those grim waiting eyes on the platform.

Then the instructor said, "Miss Allan?" with the usual dreadful
interrogative inflection, and Lila shook her head. She slid back into her
seat with her cheeks as red as fire.

The minute we escaped into the hall at the end of the recitation, the
girls gathered around us and giggled and teased Lila till she almost
broke down and cried before them all. There is a lot of difference
between playing jokes on another person and appearing ridiculous
yourself. The first few weeks of the year we had teased Martha by telling
her it was etiquette for freshmen to rise when addressed by sophomores
and stuff like that. The little thing was so unsophisticated that we made
up yards and yards of stories about the dangers of going walking alone or
being out after dusk. One student really did have her purse snatched last
year, and a senior saw a masked robber in the pines, and once a maid
caught a glimpse of a face outside her window, and actually one evening
six of us beheld with our own eyes a man jump through the hedge.

On this particular morning I had no time to waste, for my tutor in
mathematics had warned me that she intended to charge me for the hour for
which I had engaged her, no matter whether I arrived on the scene or not.
That struck me as queer and rather mean, because on some days I did not
feel like going, and I failed to see why I should pay her for tutoring
that I had not received. She said that her time was valuable and an hour
squandered in waiting for a delinquent pupil was so much loss. I guess it
was a loss to me too.

While I was flying around, trying to find my notes and pen, I heard a
gulp and a sob from Martha's bedroom, and popped in to find her with her
head buried in the pillow. The little idiot was crying because she had
flunked in English.

"Oh, but English is so easy to bluff in!" I exclaimed, "almost any string
of words will do if the teacher asks for a discussion of a tendency or of
nature or vocabulary or poetic form or something. Didn't you make a try
at some sort of an answer?"

"I said I didn't know," sobbed Martha, "and I didn't. My thoughts were
all mixed up and I couldn't remember a line."

"You goosie!" I was disgusted. "If I said I didn't know at every
opportunity where I could say it truthfully, how long do you think I
would be allowed to stay in this institution of learning? When I don't
know a fact, I use fancy. It is the greatest fun to catch a hint and
elaborate it into a brilliant recitation without a jot of knowledge to
back it up. It takes brains to do it. You've got to learn to bluff, and
then get along without studying."

The little freshman raised her heavy eyes, all reddened about the lids.
"Oh, but that isn't honest," she said.

"Not honest?" For an instant I was actually alarmed. Once when I myself
was a freshman I nearly lost my faith in human nature because a senior
whom I admired did something that looked dishonest. But sending
valentines to yourself in order to win a prize is different from
bluffing. So I said, "Nonsense!" and was just hurrying out of the door
when she called in a quivery voice: "P-please, may I borrow a sheet of
theme paper? Mine's all gone and I can't buy--I mean, it's due to-night."

"Help yourself," I answered, "there's a heap of it that I carried away
from the last German test. Right hand drawer of the desk."

"No, no! I can't take that. Haven't you any that you bought with your own
money? I'll pay it back. That paper--they gave it to you--didn't they
give it to you just for the test?"

I stopped and walked over to feel of her head and tell her that she ought
to see the doctor or take a nap or something. Then I gave her three
sheets of the paper and told her not to be silly. I don't know whether
she used it or not. At luncheon she appeared with her fingers inky and
her hat on.

Berta said, "Whither, my child?"

She answered, "Down town." And then she looked at Lila with such anxious
eyes that I jumped and clapped my hands together in contrition.

"Lila, we've forgotten to get that money for her!"

Martha turned her face toward me and sat gazing like a little dog. We
asked all the girls at the table for contributions, but they were nearly
penniless. I said, "Are you in a hurry, Martha?" And she said she had to
be there at two o'clock. So we told her to hurry on, and we would get the
money somewhere and meet her on the corner of Main and Market Streets at
quarter past four sharp. She said, "Honest?" And I answered, "Yes, trust
me. We'll be there, and I'll stand treat for soda water, if I can scrape
up any extra pennies. You run along and pick out your present."

And then, do you know, in spite of all that and our promise to meet her,
we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was
election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour
recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in
one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt
alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked
disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to join our
gang of wardheelers.

We found the judges sitting at bare tables with their lists before them
and wooden booths along the walls. And then--oh, I can't do justice to
the fun we had! Some of us hung around outside and tried to scare away
opposing voters by telling how the judges might make them sing scales or
slide down ropes or wipe off their smiles on the carpets or chant the
laundry list or write their names in ink with their noses, if they should
be challenged. We actually succeeded in frightening away several timid
freshmen. The rest of the gang pretended to stuff ballot-boxes and buy
votes, just as we had read in the papers.

Berta, Lila and I voted while wearing our overalls. Then we dashed back
to our rooms and dressed in our ordinary clothes and attempted to vote a
second time. Such fun! The judges recognized us and refused to accept our
ballots. Such an uproar as we raised! The other wardheelers stormed to
the rescue; the lists were scattered, and the tables overturned. Of
course it was only a joke, and most of us were too weak from laughing to
clear away the disorder in time for the polls to close promptly.

And then we happened to remember Martha.

There it was half-past four and it would certainly be five before we
could get ready and catch the car and reach the corner of Main and
Market. So we let it go and decided that she would be tired of waiting by
that time and start for home, and we might most likely miss her anyhow,
even if we should collect the money and try to keep the engagement. And
besides that we were having such a picnic telling about the turmoil at
the polls that we hated to waste a minute away from the scene. Berta had
a splendid idea about dressing up as policemen and borrowing the express
wagon belonging to the janitor's grandson, and then tearing over to the
gym as if we had been summoned to arrest the hoodlums and take them to
jail in the patrol. It was so late, however, that we had to give this
plan up and get ready for dinner. It was a dreadful disappointment.

Martha hadn't come yet. It was half-past five and dark, and then it was
quarter of six, and then it was six, and we went down to dinner, but she
hadn't come yet. And then it was half-past six, and we went down the
avenue to the Lodge to watch the car unload, but no Martha. We danced in
parlor J for a while, and then we went to chapel at seven, but she hadn't
come yet. And then we walked down to the Lodge again and watched three
cars stop and turn around the curve, one after another, but she wasn't in
any of them. And then we went back to tell Mrs. Howard, the lady
principal, about it. And she was awfully anxious and asked all sorts of
questions about Martha, and what kind of a girl she was, and if she had
any money with her, or any friends in town, or any peculiar habits about
running away from her friends, or any trouble lately or anything.

Then she began to telephone and went to see Prexie, and Lila and I
wandered out to the stairs above the bulletin board where the students
were waiting to hear the election returns. Between the successive
telegrams the girls clapped and laughed and stamped and hissed at
speeches by the seniors and juniors, or else they sang patriotic songs.

When Miss Benton, president of the Students' Association, the greatest
honor in the college course, and she is the finest senior in the class
too--was urged upon a chair to make a speech, Lila almost pushed me
through the banisters in her excitement. She has admired Miss Benton ever
since the first day when it rained, and we were so terribly homesick, and
she smiled at us in the corridor.

"Hush!" whispered Lila, "listen! Isn't she beautiful!"

"Ouch!" said I, "she isn't beautiful, she's downright plain with her hair
smoothed back that way." But I said it pretty low, because that staircase
banked with girls was no place for distinctly enunciated personalities.
It was a humorous speech, for one reason of Miss Benton's popularity is
her fun under a dignified manner. In the middle of the cheering after she
had finished, the messenger girl appeared with a new bulletin. Somebody
read it aloud so that we could all hear. It reported the victory of the
corrupt party machine in an important city. Nobody spoke. There was just
the faint sound of a big sighing oh-h-h! and then a hush.

The next thing I knew, Miss Benton and some other seniors were coming up
the stairs, and the girls were moving this way and that to open a path
for them. Lila crowded closer to me so as to make way. A junior on the
step below reached up her hand and stopped Miss Benton as she was
passing.

"Do wait for the next telegram, Mary," she said, "perhaps that will be
more encouraging. The country as a whole seems to be going right."

Miss Benton dropped down beside her with an awfully discouraged sort of a
sigh. "You don't live there, and I do," she said. "You do not know how
the reform party has worked with soul and strength to defeat that boss.
Something is terribly wrong with the citizens and their standards of
honesty. How could they? How could they?"

The junior bent nearer to speak in lower tones; but Lila and I could not
help hearing. "Mary, something is wrong with us too," she whispered. "Did
you know that to-day at our mock election some of the sophomores
pretended to be corrupt voters and wardheelers? They intimidated voters,
challenged registrations, played at buying votes, tried to stuff the
ballot-boxes. There was a most disgraceful scrimmage! To turn such crimes
into a joke! How could they? How could we?"

Miss Benton straightened herself with a movement that was sorrowful and
angry and discouraged all at once. She drew a deep breath.

"I will tell you what is wrong with us as well as with the entire
country. Our ideal of honesty is wrong. With us here at college the
trouble is in little things; with the world of business and politics the
evil is in great matters too. But the principle is the same. We are not
honest. We condemn graft in public office. Is it not also graft when a
student helps herself to examination foolscap and takes it for private
use? Is the girl who carries away sugar from the table any better than
the government employee who misappropriates funds or supplies in his
charge? We cry out in horror at revelations of bribery. Ah, but in our
class elections do we vote for the candidate who will best fill the
office, or for our friends? I have known a girl who desired to be
president of the Athletic Association to bargain away her influence to
another who was running for an editorship."

"And some of us travel on passes which are made out in other names."

Miss Benton did not hear. "We exclaim--we point our fingers--we groan
over the trickery of officials, scandals, bribery, treachery,
lawlessness. And yet we--is it honest to bluff in recitations--to lay
claim to knowledge which we do not possess? Is it honest to injure a
library book and not pay for the damage? Is it honest to neglect to
return borrowed property? Some of us rob the maids of strength by
obliging them to work overtime in waiting on us at the table. Our lack of
punctuality steals valuable time from tutors and teachers and each other.
We cheat the faculty by slighting our opportunities and thus making their
life work of inferior quality to that which they have a right to expect.
By heedless exaggeration we may murder a reputation--mutilate an
existence. We wrong each other by being less than our best. We are
unscrupulous about breaking promises. Down town this afternoon at the
corner of Main and Market Streets I saw a freshman waiting in the cold.
She was walking to and fro to get warm. Her teeth chattered,--she was
crying from nervous suspense. When I spoke to her and advised her to
return to college before dark, she shook her head, and said no, somebody
had promised to meet her, and she had to stay. Now that girl, whoever it
was, who broke that engagement, is responsible----"

I leaned forward and clutched Miss Benton's shoulder.

"She hasn't come back yet," I cried; "do you think she is there still? I
forgot--I thought it didn't matter. I didn't mean to--"

Miss Benton turned around her head to look up at me, and the others near
us looked too, and down at the foot of the stairs the crowd packed in
front of the bulletin board sort of quieted for a minute and seemed to be
listening and watching us. And up on the wall over their heads the big
clock went tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and its long pendulum swung
to and fro.

Then swish, swish, swish, the lady principal came hurrying through the
reception hall beyond, with her silk skirts rustling, and her face quite
pale. And the girls turned their heads toward her. She raised her hand
and said in her soft voice: "Are Miss Martha Reed's roommates here?"

And then some more girls with their hats and coats on came running up the
steps from the vestibule. The crowd was buzzing like everything when Lila
and I pushed our way through to tell Mrs. Howard we were there. We caught
scraps of sentences flying hither and thither.

"Run over?"

"Lying in the road----"

"Who found her?"

"Yes, right there in the loneliest part."

"Such a timid little thing----"

"Frightened and fell maybe----"

"Queer she didn't take the car."

"Is she dead?"

Lila pushed ahead, thrusting the girls right and left from her path. I
couldn't see her face, but her shoulders kept pumping up and down as if
she were smothering. You know she's more sensitive than I am, and I felt
badly enough.

Mrs. Howard took her hand and said, "Miss Reed wishes to see you both and
leave a message."

Of course such a speech would make anybody think she was dying. I rubbed
my sleeve across my eyes and shut my teeth together and swallowed once,
for the other girls around were gazing after us. Lila walked on with her
head up. I couldn't see anything but the line of her cheek, and that
looked sort of cold and stony. We followed on over the thick rugs into
the second reception room. There sitting in a big chair, leaning back
against a cushion kind of limp and pale but not dead at all--there was
Martha.

"Did you get the money?" she asked.

Lila didn't answer. She just dropped on her knees and hid her face
against Martha's dress.

"It was a centerpiece I thought Mother would like. I chose it in the
shop-window there at the corner while I was waiting. Maybe it will get
there almost in time if it is mailed to-morrow, but the doctor says I
must go to the infirmary for a day or two. If you would please send it
away for me in the morning--if you have the money to buy it, Lila,--I'm
sorry."

The doctor walked in alert and brusque as usual but gentle too.

"Now for my captive," she said, "time's up. Life in a study with two
sophomores is hard on a freshman's nerves. A few days of the rest-cure
will about suit you."

Martha glanced at me, for Lila was still hiding her face.

"It was silly of me," she explained shyly, "but I grew so nervous when
you didn't meet me that I cried and that made it worse. I watched every
car and both sides of the street, and I waited till after dark. You see,
I didn't have any money for car-fare. After they began to light the
lamps, I started to walk out here to the college. Everybody was eating
supper, and I was all alone on the road with dark fields on both sides. I
could not help thinking of those dreadful robbers and maniacs and
tramps----"

"What?" cried the doctor.

I drew a deep breath. "We told her," I said. "I--I'm afraid we
exaggerated. I--I thought it would be more interesting."

"Oh!" said the doctor. It was such a grim sort of an oh that I repented
some more, though indeed it was not necessary.

Martha smiled at me. I always did consider her the dearest, most
sympathetic little thing. "It was my fault," she said, "I am such a
coward anyhow. And then when I ran past a rock, I imagined I saw
something move and jump toward me. I lost my wits and ran and ran and ran
till I twisted my ankle and fell. I must have struck my head on a stone.
I'm sorry. It was silly of me to run. Please don't worry."

"That will do for the present," said the doctor.

Then they carried her over to the infirmary. Lila and I walked out past
the crowd in front of the bulletin board. They were cheering.

"Listen, Lila," I said, "good news from somewhere."

"We promised to meet her," said Lila.

I hate regrets. "Well," I said, "that's all over and done with. There is
no use in bothering about it now. But the next promise we make----"

Berta rushed up to us. "Oh, girls!" she exclaimed, "did you catch that
last return? Reform is sweeping the country. Hurrah!"




CHAPTER VII

FOUR SOPHOMORES AND A DOG


The last recitation of the winter term was over, and the corridors were
alive with girls hurrying this way and that, pinning on their hats,
buttoning jackets, crowding into the elevator, unfurling umbrellas, and
chattering all the time.

"Hope you'll have the nicest sort of a time!" "Don't stay up too late!"
"Good-bye!" "Oh, good-bye!" "Be sure to get well rested this vacation!"
"Awfully, awfully sorry you wouldn't come home with me, Gertrude, you bad
child! But I know you won't suffer from monotony with Berta and Beatrice
in the same study." "Hurry, girls, there's the car now. Just hear that
bell jingle, will you!" "Good-bye, Gertrude, and don't let Sara work too
hard!" "Oh, good-bye!"

Gertrude felt the clutch of arms relax from about her neck, and managed
to breathe again. This was one of the penalties--pleasant enough,
doubtless, if a person were in the mood for it--of being a popular
sophomore. For a minute she lingered wearily in the vestibule to watch
the figures flying down the avenue to the Lodge gates. How their skirts
fluttered and twisted around them, and how their hats danced! Their
suit-cases bounded and bumped as they ran, and their umbrellas churned up
and down in choppy billows before the boisterous March wind. There! the
last one had vanished in a whirl of flapping ends and lively angles
beyond the dripping evergreens.

As she was turning languidly away, a backward glance espied two girls
emerging from one of the dormitories far across the flooded lawn. They
came skipping over the narrow planks that had been laid in the rivers
flowing along the curving walks. The first was Berta swathed in a hooded
waterproof; and the second, of course, was Beatrice, a tam flung askew on
her red curls, her arms thrust through a coat sleeve or two, a laundry
bag swinging from one elbow, and a tin fudge pan clasped tenderly and
firmly beneath the other, while with the hands so providentially left
free she stooped at every third step to rescue one or the other of her
easy-fitting rubbers from setting out on a watery voyage all by itself.

"Hi!" she gasped after a final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of
immaculate Gertrude, "I wore your overshoes. Hope you don't mind. They're
not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move
into our borrowed study right off now."

"Where are my things?" asked Gertrude with natural curiosity and perhaps
unnatural calm.

"Here," jerking the laundry bag, "it holds a lot--brushes, soap,
nightgown, toothpowder, fountain-pen, note-book, everything. Berta
carried your mending basket. You needn't bother one bit."

"I'll run back and forth for anything you want," volunteered Berta
hastily at sight of an irritable frown on the usually serene brow of
handsome Gertrude.

"You're cross!" commented Bea with a cheerful vivacity that was
exasperating to the highest degree, considering that everybody ought to
be worn down to an unobtrusive state of limp inertia after the three busy
months just concluded, "you've been cross ever since Sara----"

"Berta, lend me your gossamer and rubbers, please," when Gertrude was
unreasonably provoked she had a habit of snapping out her words even more
clear-cut than usual. An instant later she swept forth into the rain only
to stop short and hurry in again before the door had swung shut. "We
might as well look at the study first," she said in a more gracious tone,
"and we can draw lots to see who is to have the inside bedroom. I dare
say the change to this building will be a rest."

Berta took quick survey from the window to explore the cause for this
amazing wavering of purpose.

"Ah!" she murmured in swift enlightenment, "it's Sara. She's coming over
the path."

A peculiar expression flitted across Bea's ingenuous face--an expression
half quizzical, half sorry. "Then we'd better follow Gertrude's example,
and clear the track. She'll cut us dead again--that meek little mouse of
a girl! And I don't blame her for it either, so there!"

Berta tucked a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the
gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. "It wasn't like Gertrude to
burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening,
but it did spoil the fudges and the game and everything."

"And not to give her a chance to explain!" fumed Bea's temper always
ready to flame over any injustice. "Before she could open her lips,
Gertrude blazed up, cold as an icicle----"

"What?" interpolated demure Berta with her most deeply shocked accent,
"an icicle blaze?"

"Oh, hush, you're the most disagreeable person! I wish Lila hadn't gone
home. Well, she did just that. She said the artistic temperament was no
excuse for discourteous falsehood--or she almost the same as said
it--meaning breaking your word, you know, for Sara had promised she would
come at eight, and there it was quarter to nine. She said that it might
be wiser next time to invite somebody more reliable about keeping
engagements. Sara did not answer a word--only went white as a sheet and
walked out of the room. Now she even cuts us--because we were
there--stares right over our heads when we meet her anywhere."

"I'm sure Gertrude was sorry the minute she had spoken. And she's been
working awfully hard over committees and the maids' classes and the last
play. She was tired and nervous up to the brim, and then to wait and wait
and wait for Sara. Why, I was getting cross myself."

"Well, why doesn't she beg Sara's pardon then, and make it all right?"
demanded the young judge severely. "Sara has always simply worshiped her,
but because she never has made mistakes nor learned how to apologize, and
everybody admires her and flatters her, she is too proud to say she was
wrong. It's plain vanity--that's what it is. She can't bear to make
herself do it."

"She's unhappy,--that's what I think, though she sort of pretends she
doesn't care."

"She's cross as a bear--that's what I think," snapped Bea, "and Sarah has
dark circles under her eyes. It's dreadful--those two girls who used to
be inseparable! Quarrels are--are horrible!" The impetus of this
conviction almost succeeded in hurling its proprietor against the water
cooler at the bathroom door. "Say, Berta, what if you and I should
quarrel, with Robbie Belle and Lila one thousand miles away?"

"I'm too amiable," responded Berta complacently, "sugar is sweet----"

The tin cup dropped with a flurried rattle against the fudge pan. "Oh!" a
shriek of dismay, "my dear young and giddy friend, we're all out of
sugar. What if we should want to make anything to-night? Let's run back
to the grocery by the kitchen this minute."

Owing to this delay, Gertrude had been in the study for more than ten
minutes, staring out at the trees writhing in the wind, when she was
startled by the sound of a suffocated shriek, followed by a scamper of
four thick-soled shoes, the heels smiting the corridor floor with
disgracefully mannish force. The door flew inward vehemently, and Bea
shot clear across the room to collapse in the farthest corner, hiding her
face in the fudge pan while her shoulders quivered and heaved
terrifyingly. Berta walked in behind her, and after one reproachful look,
sat down carefully in a rocker and brushed her scarlet face before
beginning to giggle helplessly.

"You're the meanest person! Beatrice Leigh, you knew I was turning into
the wrong alleyway, but you never said a word. You wanted to see me
disgraced. The door opened like magic, and there she stood as if she had
slid through the keyhole. She stood there plastered against the wall
and--and--regarded us----"

"Oh!" moaned Bea in ecstasy, one fiery ear and half a cheek emerging from
the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, "she glared. She wondered why those
two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock
or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the
other ignominiously--stark, mute, inglorious--fled, ran, withdrew--so to
speak----"

"Why didn't you say something?" groaned Berta. "I simply lost my wits
from the surprise. She was the very last person I expected to see
anywhere around here. How in the world did she happen to borrow the next
room to ours? She'll think we were making fun of her--that we did it on
purpose. She's awfully sensitive anyhow!"

"Well, you two are silly!" commented Gertrude, her face again toward the
driving storm. "Who was it? Not a senior, I hope, or a faculty?"

Bea straightened herself abruptly, the laughter driven sternly out of
every muscle except one little twitching dimple at the corner of her
mouth. "It was Sara," she exclaimed, "and she is pale as a ghost. She has
never been so strong since waking up on that boat and finding a burglar
trying to steal the ring off her finger during the holidays. You know how
she jumps at every sudden noise, and she's been getting thinner and
thinner, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself clear down to
the ground." Here the dimple vanished in earnest. "I know I'm ashamed of
myself, and so's Berta. Even her lips were white. Now we've hurt her
feelings worse. I didn't think. Nice big splendid excuse for a sophomore,
isn't it?"

"There's the gong for luncheon," was Gertrude's only reply as she moved
toward the door.

Bea's flare of denunciation had subsided quickly in her characteristic
manner. She sat absently nibbling the handle of the obliging pan, while
staring after the receding figure, its girlish slenderness stiffened as
if to warn away all friendliness. "She's stubborner than ever. I say,
Berta, let's reconcile them."

"Oh, let's!" in echoing enthusiasm, adding as the beauty of the plan
glowed brighter, "they'll probably thank us to the last day that they
live. I know I would, if it were Robbie and I who were drifting farther
and farther apart."

"Very likely," responded the arch-conspirator, beginning at the lower
edge of the tin doubtless itself delicious from long association with
dainties, "but the question is: How are we going to do it? One is proud,
and the other is proud too. I don't see exactly how we can fix it."

As Berta did not see either, they decided with considerable sound sense
meanwhile to go to luncheon. The next day after many minutes of
discouraging meditation mingled with a few hours of tennis in the
gymnasium, an idea came to them. While they rested on the window ledge,
watching Gertrude stroll to and fro in the sunshine balmy at last, Bea
began to waste her breath as usual.

"'To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow drags out its weary course from
day to day,'" she quoted with mindless cheerfulness, only to interrupt
herself good naturedly, "say, Berta, do you realize that the third
to-morrow aforementioned is April Fool's Day? I wish something
interesting would happen. This is the most monotonous place in vacation."

"To-morrow never is, it always will be," corrected the carping critic.

Bea with indifference born of long endurance paid no attention. "I say!"
rapturously as the idea began to dawn upon her inward vision, "let's
reconcile them with a joke."

"All right," agreed her partner with most charming alacrity, "what joke?"

The question was rather a poser, as Bea was inclined to take only one
step at a time and utter one thought as it obligingly arrived, without
anxiety about the next. This tendency had occasionally landed her high
and dry on the shores of nothingness in the classroom.

"Oh, um-m-m, I haven't determined that point yet. It isn't only great
minds that move slowly." Gertrude's cape swung into view at the turn of
the walk. "Berta, she looks awfully lonesome, doesn't she?"

"Well," argued the other, "nobody can expect us to do all the tagging
around ourselves, especially where a contemporary is concerned. If she
wants us to walk with her, she might omit a few snubs now and then. I'm
tired of chasing after her."

"The trouble is that you are not a faithful friend, faithful friend,"
rattled Bea, "man's faithful friend, the dog. Oh, oh, oh, Berta, I have
an idea!"

"Noble girl!" Berta patted her on the head. "I generously refrain from
comment."

"Thank you, sweetheart. I feared you could not deny yourself that remark
about keeping my idea, as I might never get another. But this one is an
idea about a dog. Let's find a puppy to give Gertrude for a soothing
companion this vacation. I love puppies."

"The question is: does Gertrude also love puppies? Or is it a joke?"

"Let's get a dog and surprise her with it April Fool's morning. He will
be such a friendly little fellow and so faithful that her conscience will
sting her----"

"I must acknowledge that you are a humane, tender-hearted individual. To
plot a stinging conscience----"

"Oh, hush, Berta! Do be nice and agreeable. I'm awfully tired this week,
and I really need some distraction. The corridors stretch out empty and
silent, and breakfast doesn't taste good at all, and--and I want to do
something for Sara."

"Oh, all right!" Berta spied the glint of an excitable tear and shrugged
the weight of common sense from her shoulders. "I'm with you."

Three days passed--three days of blue sky and fluffy clouds and air that
sent Bea dancing from end to end of the long stone wall while Berta
stumped conceitedly along the path in her new rubber boots. Gertrude
wondered aloud why two presumably intelligent young women insisted upon
spending every morning in foolish journeys over muddy country roads.
Noting an unaccustomed accent of peevishness in the energetic voice,
Berta began to worry a bit over the likelihood that such petulance was
due to impending sickness. Bea jeered at this, though with covert side
glances to detect any signs of fever. In her secret soul, where she hid
the notions which she dimly felt looked best in the dark, she reflected
that an attack of some mild disease might be a valuable form of
retribution, and also afford the invalid leisure to repent of her sins.
Still she did not quite like to mention this thought aloud, as it seemed
too unkindly vengeful with regard to any one so obviously miserable as
Gertrude.

One day on charitable plans intent the two conspirators dragged Gertrude
out across the brown fields to have fun building a bonfire, as they had
done the previous spring. But somehow the expedition was not much of a
success--possibly because the wood was too damp to burn inspiritingly. On
that other occasion Sara had been with them, and had kept them laughing.
She could say the funniest things without stirring a muscle of her small
solemn face. That stump speech of hers given from a genuine stump had
sent them actually reeling home. This year--alas!--while returning to
college rather silently, they saw Sara plodding toward them with an air
of being out for sober exercise, not pleasure. The moment she spied them,
she deliberately retraced her steps, and vanished through a hole in the
hedge. This incident set Gertrude to chattering so excitedly about
nothing in particular that the others knew she cared even more than they
had fancied.

On the evening of the last day of March, Bea and Berta came rushing into
the dining-room twenty minutes late for dinner. When they both declared
that they did not want any soup--their favorite kind, too--Gertrude
sighed impatiently over countermanding her order to the maid. It seemed
as if she were not getting rested one bit this vacation, though she did
nothing but read novels all day long. She felt sometimes as if she were
hurrying every minute to escape from herself and her own thoughts.
Everything irritated her in the strangest way. In all her busy healthful
life she had never been nervous before. It was not hard work that had
worn upon her. The doctor told them when they were freshmen that no girl
ever broke down from work unless worry was added. Gertrude knew perfectly
well what torturing little worry was gnawing away in her mind. She kept
telling herself that her speech to Sara had been true--it was so--Sara
had broken her engagement--and she could not, could not, could not humble
herself to apologize. In fact, Sara was the one who ought to offer
apologies. And all this time wilful Gertrude refused to acknowledge even
to herself that she was juggling with her conscience in the desperate
determination to hold herself free from blame in her own esteem. She
simply could not beg anybody's pardon, and she was not going to do it,
because--well, because she had not been to blame--so there!

On this particular evening, after five solid minutes of silence on the
part of her exasperating roommates, she raised her heavy eyes, and let
them rest expressionlessly on the two wind-freshened faces, till Bea's
roses blossomed to her hair.

"We're not doing anything," rebelliously, "you are so boss-y."

"Moo-oo," muttered Berta to her plate. "Bow-wow-wow." Bea choked over her
glass and fled precipitately, leaving her partner to capture a pitcher of
milk ostensibly to drink before going to bed.

Of course they would have regretted missing dessert as well as soup, if
Gertrude had not asked permission to carry some of the whipped cream to
her room. It was easier to do something unnecessarily generous than to
beg Sara's pardon--which was merely plain hard duty. The girls were not
in the study when she entered with her offering, but soon Bea dashed in
and dropped breathlessly on the couch, with a conspicuous effort to act
as if accustomed to arrive without her present double. Gertrude listened
unsuspiciously to the flurried explanation that Berta was kept by
a--a--a--friend, before she revealed the brimming trophy from dessert.

Bea clapped her hands. "Oh, you darling! the very thing! Won't that
pup"--an abrupt and convulsive cough subsided brilliantly into, "that pet
of a Berta be pleased! I'll take it to her this instant."

However, she did not invite Gertrude to accompany her, and upon her
return after a prolonged absence, she conducted herself with odd
restlessness. In the intervals of suggesting that they put up an engaged
sign or read aloud or darn stockings or play patience before going to a
certain spread, she stared at the clock. Promptly at eight she escaped
from the door, near which she had been lingering for the past
quarter-hour, with the carefully distinct announcement that she was going
after Berta, and later she might attend the spread.

Five minutes later she was bending over a fluffy little creature nestling
on Gertrude's best pillow in one of the partitioned off bathrooms at the
end of the corridor.

"He's been pretty good," said Berta as she surrendered the spoon, "and he
likes the cream, only the bubbles in it keep him awake, I think. Somebody
hammered at the door so long that I had to stuff a lot into his mouth
every time he started to cry."

Bea assumed her station of nurse with businesslike briskness. "Hurry back
to Gertrude, and coax her to go to that spread if you can. She's terribly
blue to-night. Be sure to get back here at nine, and I will take my turn
at the party so that nobody will be too curious about this affair. At ten
we shall both be here to decide about the night."

"Then we can hook the door on the inside, and climb over the partition.
Won't it be fun! I wonder if I shouldn't better practice doing it now,"
and Berta looked longingly at the black walnut precipice.

"You trot along this instant, and don't let Gertrude suspect anything for
the world. Be just as natural as you know how--more than ever before in
your life. I reckon I shall put him to sleep in a jiffy."

"Try it," called the ex-nurse with laconic scorn, "I'll allow you the
full hour for the experiment."

It must have been a very full hour indeed, to judge from Bea's feelings
as the minutes dawdled past. It seemed to her that instead of flying with
their sixty wings, according to the rhyme, each minute trailed its
feathers in the dust as it shuffled along. At first, it was amusing to
watch for the mouth to open, and then pop in a spoonful of cream. But
this soon became monotonous, especially when she learned that no matter
how long she sat motionless beside the pillow, the bright little eyes
blinked wide awake at her slightest stir to rise.

It was lonesome in that end of the great building. Their suite and Sara's
room next to it were the only ones occupied in that neighborhood during
the vacation. This bathroom was as much as forty steps distant even from
that populated spot, and not a single footfall had sounded in the
corridor since Berta had disappeared into the gloom. The light from the
outer apartment glimmered dully over the partition. At intervals in the
stillness, a drop of water clinked from the faucet out there. Bea found
herself holding her breath to listen for the tinkle of its splash.
Outside the small window, a pale moon was drifting among fluffy clouds.

More than once Bea rose with exquisite caution, and stole to the outer
door, only to hear a plaintive whine, while four clumsy paws came
pattering after her. Then followed more minutes of soothing him with
cream, and watching for the little woolly sides to cease heaving so
piteously. Perhaps after all it would have been wiser to have left this
troublesome joke with his mother on the farm.

By the time this vague suggestion had wavered into her consciousness, the
strain of waiting and listening began to re-act on her temper. Of course,
Berta had forgotten all about her watching there alone in the dark. Berta
was selfish and thoughtless and heedless. That very afternoon, while they
were bringing the puppy to college, she had almost tipped the buggy over
into a puddle. Berta had no right to impose upon her like this, and make
her do the worst part of the work every time. Why, even when they went
calling together, Bea always had to do the knocking and walk in first and
manage the conversation and everything. And now Berta was having fun at
the spread, and it must be near ten o'clock, for the watchman had already
shuffled softly past and turned the gas still lower. And she knew her
foot was going to sleep, and she could never feel the same toward Berta
Abbott again.

Bea was so sorry for herself that her lip began to quiver over a sobbing
breath, when steps came hurrying helter-skelter, the door banged open,
and Berta dived in.

"Oh, Bea, I'm dreadfully sorry! I couldn't get away before. They held
me--actually--and made me jig for them, and sing that last song I wrote.
The preserved ginger was so delicious that I saved some for you. Nobody
suspects a thing. How is the little dear?"

Bea rose with impressive dignity till the straightening of numb muscles
inspired an agonized, "Ouch!" and a stiff wriggle. It was every bit
Berta's fault, and she evidently didn't care a snap. She would show
people whether they could walk all over her and never say boo! She would
not lose her temper--oh, no! she would not utter a word--not a single one
of all the scorching things she could think of. She would just be
dignified and self-possessed and teach certain persons that she did not
intend to be imposed upon one instant longer. Therefore, Miss Beatrice
Leigh flung open the door and stalked away without a backward glance.

"Hulloa!" ejaculated Berta, staring blankly after her, "what's your
rush?"

No answer; merely a somewhat more defiant swing of the slender shoulders
vanishing in the dusk of the deserted corridor.

"What shall we do with the dog? You borrowed him--you're responsible--it's
your idea," following in a puzzled flurry as far as the threshold. "Shall
I lock him in alone? I said all along it was silly."

Those insolent shoulders sailed silently around the transverse and out of
sight.

After a petrified moment, Berta drew a deep breath, and threw back her
head while the crimson of quick resentment flamed from neck to hair. That
was a nice way to be treated, when she had simply done her best not to
arouse suspicion, exactly as Bea had warned her. She took two steps
hastily away from the spot; then turned slowly and glanced in at the soft
heap of white showing dimly on the darker blur of the pillow. She
certainly did not propose to spend the entire night in playing nurse to
anybody, especially after Bea had insulted her so unpardonably. It had
been Bea's idea all along too, and Berta had worked herself nearly to
death to make it a success. The miles and miles she had tramped through
the mud--and all to no result! Now everything was spoiled, and everybody
had quarreled with everybody else. Whereupon Berta marched away to bed,
leaving the swinging door unhooked and the outer door ajar. Bea was
indisputably right in criticising her fellow conspirator as heedless.

At midnight Gertrude sprang from her pillow, both arms flung out into the
darkness, every nerve quivering as she listened for a second scream. She
had chosen the inside bedroom that had a window opening on the corridor.
Now in the breathless silence, she heard a swift creak ending in the bang
of an up-flung sash. A swish of light garments, a thud shaking the floor
outside, and then bare feet flying in frantic haste past her room and
into the alleyway.

A crash against the study door, and the knob rattled wildly. "Let me in,
quick, quick! Help, Gertrude, help!"

There was a flash of white across the floor, the lock grated, and Sara
was in Gertrude's arms. Portières rustled apart, and two more
apparitions loomed pallidly in the dark.

"Hulloa!" gasped Berta's voice, while a woodeny click from Bea's
direction told of Indian clubs snatched bravely in readiness for war.

"Light the gas, girls," ordered Gertrude quietly; "there, dear, don't be
frightened now. See, we are all here. We will take care of you. What was
it startled you?"

"I don't know. It was dark. Something moved. I heard something. I was
afraid."

Gertrude felt her tremble, and held her closer. Over the bowed head she
spoke with her lips to the other two. "That steamboat shock."

Bea caught the idea impulsively. "Oh, Sara!" she exclaimed, "you're only
nervous. You've often waked up and screamed a little ever since that
night on the boat. It's nothing. Crackie! but you frightened us at
first!"

Sara lifted a white face. "This was different," she said; "this was
something alive. Hark!"

They leaned forward, listening. Yes, there was a footstep outside,
muffled, stealthy. A board creaked. Something was breathing.

Gertrude and Berta looked at each other in quick challenge for mutual
courage. All the other rooms at that end of the building were vacant; the
long dark corridor stretched out its empty tunnel between them and
available help. What could four girls do?

"We can scream," said Bea.

"Lock the door--and the inner window--quick!" Gertrude flew to one, Berta
to the other. "Sara, take this Indian club. Now if it really
is--anything, scream. But don't run. Don't scatter. Scream--scream all
together. Ah!"

The footsteps were coming down the alleyway toward the door. Bea filled
her lungs, and opened her mouth in valiant preparation.

"Wee-wee-wee, bow-wow!" Two little paws scratched at the door.

Bea's breath issued in a feeble squeak, as she dropped neatly down upon
the floor and buried her face in her hands.

Berta swooped upon her. "The puppy!"

Gertrude felt herself freed from the encircling arms. She moistened her
lips. "I am sorry, Sara, about the other night. I am--sorry."

The pale little face upturned toward hers began to glow as if touched
with sunshine. "I was late because Prexie kept me. I should have
explained, but--but it hurt. I knew you were sorry."

Berta sat up as if jerked into position by a wire, and briskly brushed
the hair out of her eyes.

"Listen, Bea," she whispered to a small pink ear half hidden by red
curls, "they're reconciled."

"So are we," said Bea, "please open the door for the puppy."




CHAPTER VIII

CLASSES IN MANNERS


Gertrude's brother paid another visit to his sister at Class Day. At
least, he was supposed to be visiting his sister, but it was really Bea
who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while
Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her
score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool
basement room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first
assistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers
in the field beyond the dormitories.

After that labor was finished, and even Lila had deserted her for the
sake of an insensate trunk that demanded to be packed, Bea conducted her
companion to the lake. There through the golden hour of midday they
drifted in the shadow of the overhanging trees along the shore. Once they
paddled softly around the little island at the end, and a colony of baby
mud-turtles went scrambling madly from a log into the water. When the
brother began to fish for one with an oar, Bea protested in a grieved
tone.

"But you don't seem to realize that I am worrying about freckles every
minute that we stay out here in the broad sunlight. What are trees for if
not to provide shade for girls without hats? And anyhow it is unkind to
seek to tear a turtle from his happy home. If you do that, I shall never,
never consent to admit you to our highest class in manners."

"Highest class in manners," he echoed, "that sounds promising. Is it
another story?"

"It certainly is," replied Bea, "and if you are very good indeed and will
keep the boat close to the bank from the first word to the last, I will
tell you all about it."

Berta called it our classes in manners, but Miss Anglin, our sophomore
English teacher, said that it was every bit as bad as gossip. When Berta
told her that she was the one who had started us on it by advising us to
read character in the street-cars, she looked absolutely appalled, and
groaned, "What next?"

This was the beginning of it. When Miss Anglin took charge of our essay
work the second semester, she explained that we should be required to
write a one-page theme every day except Saturday and Sunday. Lila almost
fainted away, because she hates writing anything, even letters home.
Robbie Belle looked scared, and I opened my mouth so wide that my jaw
ached for several minutes afterward. But Berta kept her wits about her.
She said, "Miss Anglin, we are all living here together, and we see the
same things every day. I'm afraid you'll be bored when you read about
them over and over. Why can't some of us choose intellectual topics?"

By intellectual topics she meant subjects that you can read up in the
encyclopædia. Miss Anglin sort of smiled. "Do you truly think that you
all see the same things day after day? How curious! Have you ever played
a game called Slander?"

"Yes, Miss Anglin," said Berta, and went on to tell how the players sit
in a circle, and the first one whispers a story to the second; and the
second repeats it as accurately as she can remember to the third; and the
third tells it to the fourth, and so on till the last one hears it and
then relates it aloud. After that the first one gives the story exactly
as he started it. It is awfully interesting to notice the difference
between the first report and the last one, because somehow each person
cannot help adding a little or leaving out a little in passing it on to
the next. That is the way slander grows, you know. The gossip may be true
at first, or almost true, but it keeps changing and getting worse and
worse and more thrilling as it spreads till finally it isn't hardly true
at all. That is how our classes in manners turned out.

Well, to go back to that day in the rhetoric section. Miss Anglin saw
that we were discouraged before we had commenced and we didn't know how
to start; and so she began to suggest subjects. For instance, she said,
one girl might wake up in the morning----Oh, but I am forgetting her
application of the illustration from the game of Slander. She said that
if no two persons receive the same impression from a whispered story
spoken in definite words, it is probable that no two pairs of eyes see
the same thing in the same way, to say nothing of the ideas aroused in
the different brains behind the eyes. One girl might wake up in the
morning, as I was saying, and when she looks from the window she sees
snow everywhere--provided it did snow during the night, you understand.
Then she writes her daily theme about the beautiful whiteness, the
shadows of bare trees, diamond sparkles everywhere and so forth. Another
girl looks out of that very same window at the same time, and she doesn't
think of the beautiful snow merely as snow; she thinks of coasting or
going for a sleigh-ride or something like that. And so her theme very
likely will prove to be a description of a coasting carnival or
tobogganing which she once enjoyed. Another girl looks out and thinks
first thing, "Oh, now the skating is spoiled!" Her theme maybe will tell
how she learned to skate by pushing a chair ahead of her on the ice.

Berta raised her hand again. "Well, but, Miss Anglin," she said, "suppose
it doesn't snow?"

Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she
is used to having the girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this
time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing
her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things
we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she
drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid
field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try
observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner,
with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat
pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his
mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely
because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on buttons. She
told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who
holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some
temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary,
and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down
firmly and decidedly at every step--though of course it needn't be
thumping--while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along
uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts
his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.

Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic
about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble
over the threshold.

"Oho!" jeered Berta, "you're careless. That's as easy as alpha, beta,
gamma."

She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek,
being a sophomore.

"But she isn't careless," protested Lila, "she's the most careful person
I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she
stumbled."

"Why is it split?" demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; "would
a nobly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a
shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because
the threshold wasn't there, or because she had forgotten it was there,
the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her
mentality instead of to her character, alas! A stumble plus a split sole!
Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme."

Robbie Belle looked alarmed. "Indeed, Berta, I'd rather not. I was going
to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary
Winchester."

"Ha! lent her your knife!" declaimed Berta sternly, "another clue! This
must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?"

"To sharpen her pencil," answered Robbie. "I made her take it."

"Her pencil! Her pencil!" muttered Berta darkly, "why her pencil? Are
there not pens? Mayhap, 'tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I
thrust into a daily theme."

"She's snippy about returning things," said Lila, "she acts as if she
didn't care whether you do her a favor or not. I don't like her."

"She's queer," I said.

Now I had a perfect right to say that because it was true. Mary
Winchester was just about the queerest girl in college. Everybody thought
so. But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject
of the rest of this story. If I told you immediately just how she was
queer and all the rest of it, there wouldn't be any story left, would
there?

Well, as the weeks whirled past, we studied character and wrote daily
themes till we were desperate. Robbie Belle grew sadder and sadder until
Berta suggested that she might describe the gymnasium, the chapel, the
library, the drawing rooms, the kitchen, and so forth, one by one,
telling the exact size and position of everything. That filled up quite a
number of days. When Miss Anglin put a little note of expostulation, so
to speak, on the theme about the corridor--it was, "This is a course in
English, not mathematics, if you please,"--Berta started her in on the
picture gallery. There were enough paintings there to last till the end
of the semester. Of course, such work did not require her to read
character. Robbie Belle didn't want to do that somehow; she said it
seemed too much like gossip.

However, at first, it wasn't gossip. For instance one day Lila and I
collected smiles. We scurried around the garden and dived in and out of
the hedge in order to meet as many people as possible face to face. Then
we took notes on the varieties of greeting and made up themes about them.
Miss Anglin marked an excellent on mine that time. For another topic we
paid one-minute calls on everybody we knew. When they looked surprised
and inquired why we did not sit down, we frankly explained that we were
gathering material for an essay on Reading Character from the Way a
Person says "Come in!"

After we had been grinding out daily themes for three weeks we began to
long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung
dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank
paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a
snowball against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the
corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without
waiting for an answer.

"Listen! Quick! I have an idea. It struck me out by the hedge. Why not
study manners as well as character? Why not divide----"

"Go away. That snowball plop against the pane spoiled my best sentence.
This is due in forty minutes. I've written up my family and friends and
books and pictures, my summer vacations--a sunset at a time, my
little----"

"Why not divide everybody, I say----"

"----dog at home," I continued placidly. "I've composed themes about the
orchard, the woods, the table-fare, the climate, the kitten I never
owned, the thoughts I never had. To-day I was in despair for a subject
till I happened to borrow one of your cookies and----"

"You did! My precious cookies! Burglar!"

"----bite it into scallops. Ha! an idea! I arranged myself on the rug
with much care in order that I might stretch out the process to a whole
page of narration. Thereupon I nibbled off the corners of the scallops
till the cookie was round and smooth again. Next I bit it into scallops
and then I nibbled off the corners; and next I bit and then I nibbled;
and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit----"

"You did! Oh, I wish I----"

"----and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled, till there
was nothing left but the hole. Now I am writing a scintillating and
corruscating theme about it. Go away."

Berta turned toward the door. "Some day you'll wish you had listened,"
she declared in accents heavy with gloom, "some day when you can't think
of a single thing to write about, and the hand keeps moving around the
clock, and the paper lies there blank and horrible before your vacant
eyes, and your pen is nibbled so short that your fingers----"

"I didn't mean go away," I said, "I meant, go on. Tell me about it."

"Nay, nay! To lacerate my feelings, spurn my proffered aid, insult my
youthful pristine zeal, and then to call me back--in short, to throw a
dog a bone! Nay, nay!"

"Oh, Berta, be sweet. Tell me. You know that I think you have the most
original ideas in college." After I had coaxed her quite a lot, she told
me her new scheme. It was something like advanced character reading and
biology combined. Just as scientists classify trees and plants in botany,
Berta proposed that we should divide the students into different classes
according to their manners.

"It will be so improving and instructive too," she pleaded, "we'll be
paragons of politeness before we finish them all. We'll be so particular
about our highest class that we will notice every little thing and thus
take warning." She paused a moment; then, "Did you hear me say thus?" she
inquired. When I nodded, she gazed at me sadly. "People who belong to the
highest class never gesticulate; they use spoken language exclusively.
Furthermore, as to the thus. I wondered if an up-springing sense of
courtesy persuaded you to refrain from hooting at such elegant verbiage.
That would be a sign of benefit already derived from the classes. By the
way, it was Mary Winchester who inspired the idea."

"Oh, but she has no manners at all!" I exclaimed before I thought.

"That is precisely the point. I met her flying along like a wild creature
on her bicycle, eyes staring, hair streaming in the wind. At least, some
locks were streaming. She gave the impression of a being utterly lawless.
Then I thought----See here, Miss Leigh, are you interested in my
thoughts?"

"Yes'm," I answered meekly.

"Then drop that pen and pay attention. Even the girls who are to belong
to the second class in manners know how to do that. Well, I thought that
she hardly ever accepts an invitation, and she looks as she didn't expect
anybody to like her, and she minds her own business and does exactly as
she pleases generally. My next important thought was that sometimes she
cuts me in the hall, and sometimes she doesn't, just as she happens to
feel. That led to the philosophic reflection that politeness is a
question of law."

"Ah, pardon me, Miss Abbott, but I remember from a story which was read
by my teacher about forty years ago when I was in the fourth reader that

                "'Politeness is to do or say
                The kindest thing in the kindest way.'"

"That's what I meant. The law of kindness--that's what politeness is.
Listen to the logic. Mary Winchester is lawless, hence she breaks the law
of kindness, hence she has no manners, hence it will be fun to divide
everybody here into various classes according to their manners."

So that is the way our classes began.

It was awfully, awfully interesting. Robbie Belle said she didn't want
to; but Berta and Lila and I talked and talked and talked. We sat in the
windows and talked instead of dancing between dinner and chapel. We
talked after chapel, and on our way to classes or to meals. And of course
we talked while we were skating or walking or doing anything similar that
did not demand intellectual application. Lila even talked about the
classes in her sleep. We discussed everybody who happened to attract our
attention.

Finally we had sifted out all the candidates for the highest class except
three. One was the senior president, pink and white and slender and
gentle and she never thumped when she walked or laughed with her mouth
open or was careless about spots on her clothes or forgot the faces of
new girls who had been introduced to her. The second was a professor who
was shy and sweet and went off lecturing every week. The third was a
teacher who looked like a piece of porcelain and always wore silk-lined
skirts and never changed the shape of her sleeves year after year. Not
one of the three ever hurt anybody's feelings.

Miss Anglin was obliged to go into the second class because she had
moods. No, I don't mean because she had them,--for sometimes you cannot
help having moods, you know--but because she showed them. She let the
moods influence her manner. Some mornings she would come down to
breakfast as blue as my dyed brilliantine--(how I hated that frock!)--and
would sit through the meal without opening her mouth except to put
something into it; though on such occasions we noticed that she rarely
put into it very much besides toast and hot water. On other days she made
jokes and sparkled and laughed with her head bent down, and was so
absolutely and utterly charming that the girls at the other tables wished
they sat at ours, I can tell you. We three were exceedingly fond of her,
but we agreed at last after arguing for seven days that true courtesy
makes a person act cheerfully and considerately, no matter how she may
feel inside.

There were about nine in that second class, and fourteen in the third and
twenty in the fourth, when we started in on Mary Winchester.

Lila and I were rushing to get ready for the last skating carnival of the
season. Some one knocked at the door. It was Mary, but she didn't turn
the knob when I called, "Come." She just waited outside and gave me the
trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were
through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened
to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of her skates.

"I saw a pair of strange skates in my room," she said and walked away as
indifferent as you please.

Now wouldn't any one think that was queer?

It made Lila cross, especially when she found that the skates had three
new spots of rust on them. March is an irritable month, anyhow, you know.
Everybody is tired, and breakfast doesn't taste very good. She sputtered
about the rust till we reached the lake where we found two big bonfires
and three musicians to play dance music while we skated. Imagine how
lovely with the flames leaping against the background of snowy banks and
bare black trees! Berta and Lila and I crossed hands and skated around
and around the lake with the crowd. When we stopped in the firelight,
Lila looked unusually pretty with her rosy cheeks and her curls frosted
by her breath. Berta's eyes were like stars. Of course Robbie Belle was
beautiful, but she did not associate much with us that evening. After one
turn up and back again while we discussed Mary Winchester, she said she
thought she would invite our little freshman roommate for the next
number.

We kept on talking about Mary. Lila was insisting that she ought to be
put in the tenth class or worse, while Berta maintained that she wasn't
quite so bad as that. I kept thinking up arguments for both sides.

Lila counted off her crimes, and she didn't speak so very low either.
"Mary Winchester doesn't deserve a place even in the tenth class. Why,
listen now. You admit that she borrows disgracefully and never returns
things. At least, she helped herself to my skates. It is almost the same
as stealing. She has no friends. She always goes off walking alone, and
sits in the gallery by herself at lectures and concerts. Everybody says
she is queer."

"Miss Anglin thinks girls in the mass are funny," I volunteered, "though
maybe they are not any more so than human kind in the bulk. She says that
we all imagine we admire originality, but when we see any one who is
noticeably different from the rest, we avoid her. We call her queer and
are afraid to be seen with her."

"Mary Winchester's independence is commendable," protested Berta. "I envy
her strength of character. She ignores foolish conventions----"

"As for instance, the distinction between mine and thine," interrupted
Lila, "you don't live next to her, and you don't know. Her disregard for
the property rights of others indicates a fatal flaw----"

"Fatal flaw, fatal flaw!" chanted Berta mischievously, "isn't that a
musical phrase! Say it fast now, and see if it tangles your tongue."

I was afraid Lila would feel wounded, so I remarked hastily that we
agreed that Mary was not polite; the question was as to the degree of
impoliteness.

"Even Robbie Belle acknowledges that she is not a lady," chimed in Berta;
"she said it when Mary wanted to take that stray kitten to the biological
laboratory. She declared it would be happier if dead."

"And it wasn't her kitten either," I contributed. "Robbie found it up a
tree. It is necessary to weigh every little point in a scientific study
like this."

"Don't you see, girls, that Mary Winchester does not come from good
stock," began Lila, "of course she isn't a lady. Her attitude toward the
rights of others is certain proof that her family has a defective moral
sense. Perhaps her brother----"

"Oh, let's follow out the logical deductions," cried Berta. "That course
in logic is the most fascinating in the whole curriculum. See--if a girl
lacks moral judgment, she either inherits or acquires the defect. If she
inherits it, her father doubtless was dishonest. Maybe he speculated and
embezzled or gambled or something. If she acquired it through
environment, her brother must have suffered likewise as they were
presumably brought up together. So perhaps Mary Winchester's brother was
expelled from college for kleptomania."

"Then," said Lila triumphantly, "how can we possibly put her into even
the lowest of our classes in manners?"

"Hi, there!" I started to scream before the breath was knocked out of me
by colliding with some girls who had been skating in front of us. One of
them had caught her skate in a crack, and we were so intent on our
conversation that we bumped into them, and all tumbled in a heap. Nobody
was hurt. That is, nobody was hurt physically. We picked ourselves up and
went on skating as before. It was not until days later that we discovered
what had been hurt then. It was Mary Winchester's reputation. Those girls
in front had overheard part of our remarks. And they thought that we were
talking about real facts instead of just analyzing character.

It was exactly like a game of slander, only worse. The rumor that Mary
Winchester's father was a gambler and that her brother had been expelled
from college for stealing spread and grew like fire. You know, as I said
before, she was a queer girl--so queer in countless small ways that she
was conspicuous. Even freshmen who did not know her name had wondered
about the tall, wild-looking girl who had a habit of tearing alone over
the country roads as if trying to get away from herself. Naturally when
such a report as this one of ours reached them, they adopted it as a
satisfactory explanation. They also, so to speak, promulgated it.

The first we knew of the rumor was from Robbie Belle. It was the
afternoon before the Easter vacation, and Lila and I were in Berta's room
to help her pack her trunk. At least Lila held the nails while Berta
mended the top tray and I did the heavy looking on. When Berta stopped
hammering and put her thumb in her mouth, I remarked that nobody who
squealed ouch! in company could belong to our highest class in manners.

Lila's expression changed from the pained sympathy of friendship to the
scientific zeal of character study. "Girls, have you noticed Mary
Winchester lately? It is the strangest thing! She seems more alone and
alien than ever. The girls avoid her as if she had the plague. In the
library and the corridor to-day it was as plain as could be. They stop
talking when she comes around. They watch her all the time though they
try not to let her know it. Of course, she couldn't help feeling it. They
point her out to each other, and raise their brows and whisper after she
has passed. She moves on with her head up and her mouth set tight. Her
manners are worse than ever."

"When I met her this morning, she looked right through me and didn't see
anything there, I reckon," said I, "and, oh, Lila, you were mistaken
about her borrowing your skates without leave. It was Martha who had them
that morning. In rushing to class she got mixed up and threw them in at
the wrong door, that's all. Our example is corrupting the infant."

Berta forgot her aching thumb. "Something is wrong. Mary's eyes are those
of a hunted creature. Driven into a corner. Everybody against her. I
wonder----"

Robbie Belle walked slowly into the room, her clothes dripping with
water.

"Mary Winchester fell into the lake," she said, "you did it."

In the silence I heard Berta draw a long sigh. Then she dropped her
hammer.

"She broke through the ice," added Robbie Belle.

"But the ice is rotten. How did she get on it?" asked my voice.

"She walked," answered Robbie Belle, "I saw her." Then she crossed over
to Berta, put both arms around her neck, hid her face against her
shoulder, and began to shake all over. "I helped pull her out, and she
fought me--she fought----"

At that moment little Martha, our freshman roommate, came running in.
"That queer girl jumped into the lake. I saw them carrying her to the
infirmary. She did it because everybody knows her father is in the
penitentiary. They heard about it at the skating carnival. Her brother is
an outlaw too----"

Robbie Belle lifted her head. "She hasn't any brother, but it is true
about her father. The doctor knows. She wonders how the story got out. It
was a secret. Mary changed her name. She--she fought me."

I heard Berta sigh again. It sounded loud. Lila sat staring straight in
front of her with such a horrified expression on her white face that I
shut my eyes quick.

When I opened them again, Miss Anglin stood in the doorway. I never was
so glad to see anybody in all my life. But we did not tell her then about
our classes in manners. We waited till one day in June when she asked us
how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell.

As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was
the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and
over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila.
She said that she dared not fail. Of course Robbie Belle helped a lot in
her steady, beautiful way. Martha did her best too, partly because she
was so sorry about her share in the affair of the skates. In fact all the
girls were perfectly lovely to Mary after the doctor had persuaded her
not to throw everything up and run away to hide. By and by she realized
that it was no use to refuse to be friends.

Indeed she is a dear girl when you get to know her real self. Her
unfortunate manner--it was unfortunate, you know--had been a sort of
armor to shield her sore pride. She had been afraid of letting anybody
have a chance to snub her. That was the reason why she had seemed so
offish and suspicious and indifferent and lawless and queer.

Do you know, I never heard Robbie Belle say a sharp thing except once.
She said it that day when we were telling Miss Anglin about the classes.
It was: "Whenever I want to say something mean about anybody, I think I
shall call it a scientific analysis of character."




CHAPTER IX

THIS VAIN SHOW


It was the first evening at college in their junior year. Upon coming out
of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door.
Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of
trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of
perversity danced tantalizingly just beyond reach.

"You imp! And I haven't seen you for three months. Help me!" she beckoned
to Berta who that moment emerged from dinner, "run around that side and
catch her."

But Bea, swiftly subsiding from her mischievous agility, stood still and
regarded them with an air of surprised, sad dignity as the two flung
themselves upon her.

"Young ladies, I am astonished at such behavior. Leading juniors--real,
live, brand-new juniors--and to display such lack of self-restraint, such
disdain of gracefulness and repose! Oh!" her voice changed magically,
"oh, you, dear sweet, darling girls, I love you pretty well."

"Then why," queried Berta, gasping as she released herself, "then why, I
repeat, do you endeavor to choke us to death?"

"Because," answered Bea, as she meekly allowed Lila to straighten her hat
while Berta rescued her satchel from the middle of the corridor, "because
you are so nice and noble and haven't any false feeling about little
tokens of affection like that. In fact, you haven't any false pride or
anything false, and I have a tale of woe to tell you by and by. Hereafter
I intend to be a typical college girl, not an exception."

The promised by and by proved to be the hour of unpacking after chapel
services. While Bea was emptying her satchel that night she snatched up a
little fringed napkin and shook it vigor

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